This past September, Assistant Dean of Students at Emmons Devon Sakamoto and Health Promotion Specialist Laura Fettig applied for and received a $300,000 grant from the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services of America (SAMHSA) that will be distributed evenly over the next three years. Fettig said this grant will allow Emmons to expand its training, wellness services and overall campus involvement in supporting mental health.
“It’s not just about the clinical support that we offer. It’s really about engaging the entire campus in [suicide] prevention,” Fettig said. “[Occidental’s] Health Promotion Program is really meant to be looking at ways we can build skills and educate students.”
Sakamoto said mental health support and suicide prevention is an important part of Emmons services and that this grant will allow them to expand mental health training to the rest of the campus.
“We will gain more coverage for students in need to be identified and supported,” Sakamoto said.
Sakamoto said that while this grant does not provide enough money to add new full-time staff to the Emmons team, it does provide the opportunity to bring in additional help for special situations.
“If we need to bring in a therapist to deal with a specific issue or of a certain identity, then we can contract with an outside therapist for that specialized help,” Sakamoto said.
Fettig said that the training made possible by this grant will be beneficial to the entire campus and support students on a higher level. She said that everyone who interacts with students — including professors, athletic coaches, RA’s and Student Leadership, Involvement, & Community Engagement (SLICE) staff — is in a position to identify when a student is not doing well or needs support.
“To be able to notice signs that students are not doing well, understand resources, understand how to engage with students and make sure that they’re getting connected to the support that they need is important,” Fettig said.
Fettig said a large component of this grant will be used to make Occidental a JED Campus, a program from The Jed Foundation that provides colleges and universities with expert emotional support and guidance for students to protect their mental health and prevent suicide.
“[The Jed Foundation] is going to offer technical assistance and data collection support,” Fettig said. “We get to work with them to assess the gaps, and they have a specific framework that they use that kind of looks at all these different areas.”
Fettig said another part of being a JED Campus is the implementation of a survey called the Happy Minds Survey. She said that this survey, created by the JED Foundation exclusively for JED Campuses, will help Emmons staff better understand the state of mental health, substance abuse and level of need on campus.
“We will get funding as a part of JED campus to implement this survey at Oxy,” Fettig said. “This will help us assess where Oxy students are at.”
Matt Gragg, director of the Counseling Center at the University of Redlands, said via email that the JED Campus program has helped his campus improve its mental health support and wellbeing outreach, which has also led to decreased stigma around mental health and an increase in students attending counseling.
“According to a recent Healthy Minds Survey on our campus, an increased number of students reported that they agreed with the statement, ‘I lead a purposeful and meaningful life,'” Gragg said.
Fettig said a portion of this grant will also be used to support clubs on campus and get them involved in mental health support initiatives.
“Student groups will be able to apply for small grants for funding toward doing activities and programming that help enhance student well-being or mental health in some way,” Fettig said.
Sakamoto said this grant is filling a need they have seen on campus — improved and expanded mental health support for all of Occidental’s students that is not exclusive to Emmons’ resources.
“[It’s] more than just a benefit [to] Emmons — it’s a benefit for [the] campus in general,” Sakamoto said. “A lot of the preventative health promotion, harm reduction and keeping people healthy is everybody’s responsibility on campus […] we’re all making these decisions on how to keep the campus healthy together.”
Contact Cali Carter at ccarter2@oxy.edu
