Pioneer Support Network tackles mental health stigma

The Pioneer Support Network (PSN) is a new student-led mental health initiative for Lewis & Clark students that will begin in Fall 2021. Using a peer-to-peer support model, PSN hopes to break down the stigma of seeking professional help by facilitating weekly support groups led by trained students.

According to PSN Directors Abby Barnes ’21 and Millie Robson ’21, two of PSN’s five directors, these support groups are meant to encourage students to have open and honest conversations about their mental health. They have partnered with a national nonprofit called the Support Network to ensure that the conversations will center around issues important to students, such as stress prevention.

“I think what is so great is that this program is being created in an open and vulnerable way, which means that it’s going to respond to the students, as it’s student-led,” Barnes said. “And really, it’s up to the students to decide what they want to talk about, obviously in ways that we are trained to tackle (those issues). But making it as open and vulnerable as we can I think actually accommodates the students much more than having fixed topics.”

When they were first years, Barnes and Robson recall struggling with their mental health and not being able to find the resources they needed on campus. Now, as seniors, they want to ensure that every student has an opportunity to receive the support they need.

“Mental health is one of the number one concerns for undergraduates and for students in general, especially with COVID now,” Barnes said. “It just seemed like a time that this needed to happen and something that both Millie and I could actually achieve.”

Through the Student Academic Affairs Boards Social Impact Grant, PSN was able to hire Mental Health Counselor Kathy Holmes Sullivan as an advisor. As part of her role, she will oversee student training, which includes teaching a practicum throughout the course of the semester and supervising a leadership retreat in September.

Barnes and Robson made note of the fact that the training is not meant to provide the student leaders with the skills of a professional. Rather, it is designed to teach them about offering peer support and leading conversations that address serious mental health concerns.

Robson believes that the peer support PSN will offer can lead to a wide range of benefits for LC students.

“For my capstone senior thesis class, I did a literature review on the efficacy of peer support in a college setting … there’s kind of an insane amount of benefits even when there isn’t a focus on mental health,” Robson said. “There’s stress reduction, less feelings of isolation, better school retention — so many things. Basically, just feeling less lonely on campus.”

She hopes that incoming students will use PSN as a way to acclimate to college life and look out for their mental health.

“I think a lot of people experience coming to school and not finding the right people at first or maybe feeling lonely at times,” Robson said. “And I think social support alone is just such a wonderful thing (to address that).”

Ultimately, PSN looks forward to working with different student organizations on campus as well as the counseling service in order to reach as many students as possible. In doing so, they hope to foster more conversations surrounding mental health and promote healthy ideals for the LC community.

If you would like to get involved, you can reach out to PSN over email or follow their page on Instagram @piosupportnetwork to stay up to date on the launch of their website, which will have director and leadership applications as well as more information regarding their Fall 2021 debut.