{"id":25938,"date":"2023-05-26T12:48:51","date_gmt":"2023-05-26T16:48:51","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/?p=25938"},"modified":"2023-05-31T13:26:17","modified_gmt":"2023-05-31T17:26:17","slug":"paladin-peer-support-promotes-mental-well-being-on-campus","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/paladin-peer-support-promotes-mental-well-being-on-campus\/","title":{"rendered":"Student to student, Paladin Peer Support promotes mental well-being"},"content":{"rendered":"

May is Mental Health Awareness Month<\/a>. For on-demand mental health and crisis support at Furman, visit the Counseling Center<\/a> or call 864-294-3031, #3.<\/em><\/p>\n

When Furman\u2019s Paladin Peer Support<\/a> (PPS) was founded in 2019, it was intended to reach students who might not yet feel comfortable reaching out for the school\u2019s existing mental health resources, said Emme Edwards \u201924, a psychology and anthropology double major.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s sometimes just hard to reach out and accept the help that might be given to you,\u201d said Edwards, PPS president for the 2023-2024 academic year. \u201cEspecially for first-year students, it\u2019s a huge transition. You\u2019re not around your parents, you\u2019re not around siblings and old friends.\u201d<\/p>\n

Today, students can talk things over with the Peer Mentors<\/a> in the Pathways<\/a> program, but in 2019, the need for PPS was clear to the group\u2019s early members.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey might feel more comfortable having a one-on-one conversation with someone closer to their age, who\u2019s been through similar issues,\u201d said Caroline Nusloch \u201925, a public health major who will be the vice president of PPS in 2023-2024.<\/p>\n

Talking one-on-one<\/h3>\n
\"\"<\/a>

In Spring 2021, Paladin Peer Support posted a list of stress-reducing tips on its Instagram account.<\/p><\/div>\n

That was the idea Sarah Briere \u201922 pitched to Thomas Baez and Allyson Brathwaite-Gardner, director and associate director, respectively, of the Counseling Center in 2019.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt seemed natural to me that a student could want to start something like this,\u201d said Brathwaite-Gardner, who had seen similar peer support programs succeed at Brown and Harvard universities. \u201cSarah was deeply altruistic; she felt that she had benefitted from good peer support and clinical support, and she wanted to find a way to spread it. I couldn\u2019t not<\/em> support her.\u201d<\/p>\n

Briere, now a clinical psychology doctoral student at Spalding University in Louisville, Kentucky, began recruiting volunteers, many of whom, like Edwards and Nusloch, were fellow members of the Alpha Delta Pi sorority. Brathwaite-Gardner helped arrange for the students to get mental health skills training from NAMI Greenville<\/a>, the local chapter of the National Alliance on Mental Illness.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe learned how to talk one-on-one and create a helpful and supportive environment,\u201d said Edwards, who joined a later group of trainees.<\/p>\n

They also learned the QPR<\/a> (question, persuade, refer) suicide prevention intervention \u2013 necessary because, even though the Counseling Center was there to help students in distress, \u201csuicide prevention is a campus responsibility,\u201d said Brathwaite-Gardner. \u201cWe want to make sure everyone on this campus feels some degree of agency about asking another member of the community if they need help with suicidal thinking.\u201d<\/p>\n

Moving toward mindfulness<\/h3>\n

Post-Pathways, PPS is exploring new ways to support their peers. The group has pivoted toward promoting wellness and mindfulness, pointing students toward existing campus resources and helping them deal with stress and other issues through its Instagram account<\/a> and information tables at campus events.<\/p>\n

At one table, PPS promoted the Headspace meditation app<\/a>, which is free to Furman students. The group has also handed out information on meditation practices and essential oils, hosted a stretching workshop and five-minute mini-massages, and used the remainder of its yearly budget \u201cto buy everyone Starbucks coffee on campus,\u201d said Nusloch.<\/p>\n

In addition to basic mental health skills training from NAMI, the volunteers will receive mindfulness training from faculty advisor Mary Sturgill, a media specialist and communication studies instructor as well as a certified yoga and meditation teacher. The breathing and meditation techniques \u201caid you in processing negative emotions, so you don’t get stuck in that negative space,\u201d Sturgill said. The techniques can benefit the volunteers themselves as well as the students they meet with, she said.<\/p>\n

Edwards and Nusloch\u2019s goals for PPS include CLPs to promote mental well-being and mindfulness, student-taught yoga classes and visits from therapy dogs, a vision which \u201chas a future on this campus,\u201d said Brathwaite-Gardner.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe way that we live, the pace of our lives \u2013 when you find a group of students who want to be caring of themselves and other students, it\u2019s a win-win,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The student group complements Furman\u2019s mental health resources with information tables on campus and wellness tips on social media.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":265,"featured_media":25940,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[71,48,94,27],"tags":[105],"class_list":["post-25938","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-anthropology","category-psychology","category-public-health","category-student-life","tag-mental-health"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25938","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/265"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=25938"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25938\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/25940"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=25938"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=25938"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=25938"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}