By Casey Gannon
On Thursday, Oct. 10 the third annual Terps Take Care Fair took place in the Hornbake Plaza. Student organizations, university departments and local businesses participated in an effort to display resources accessible to students who may be struggling with mental health.
Leslie Krafft, a North Campus case manager for the Department of Resident Life, was one of the founders of the Terps Take Care Fair. She has been working with her University of Maryland colleagues to maintain the fair.
“This was actually a brainchild that we cooked up with scholars, promoting and revitalizing care,” Krafft said. “It has been growing every year. So, I have lots of support and a lot of people involved.”
At least 15 new organizations signed up to participate this year. Krafft explained that this year’s Terps Take Care fair was different from last year’s because of new diversity and the number of new groups joining the event.
“Another thing that we really pushed is trying to get diverse student organizations and campus offices that especially represent communities that tend to have maybe more stigma around mental health treatment,” Krafft said. “So, that people can also see folks that look like them in their own community and think it’s okay.”
Erica Hsu, a senior health science major, was at the fair representing Campus Advocates Respond and Educate to Stop Violence. CARE is a university organization that provides confidential services to those who may have been affected by sexual assault, dating or domestic violence. The Terps Take Care Fair allows students to see that services such as CARE are available to students..
“I think it’s important because it just gives us the opportunity to talk to students that may not be comfortable directly coming to us…more in this general, broad setting,” Hsu said.
Students were also tabling and advertising for the Help Center. The Help Center is a student run peer counseling and intervention hotline. Its website also provides resources for students struggling with mental health, such as group and individual counseling with the Health center.
Senior psychology major Negeen Fadae and junior community health major Claire Pennington were representing the Help Center and advertising its services.
“We’re here just to let people know about the Help Center and what we do and the services we provide,” Fadae said.
They stressed the importance of the Help Center hotline, a number that students can call for confidential help on personal problems.
“We would love to talk to you about anything you want to talk about, anything that’s on your mind that you’re struggling with,” Fadae said.
Pennington also chimed in on the importance of destigmatizing the act of seeking help for mental health on campus.
“No matter what people say, there’s still a stigma around taking care of yourself mentally,” Pennington said. “Even like little things like seeking therapy is seen as ‘Oh, there’s something wrong with you.’”
She added that while it is importance to destigmatize mental health, it is also imperative that students know that they need to take care of themselves mentally.
Krafft hopes that the fair will continue to grow and wants to assure students that seeking help for mental health is one method for taking care of themselves.
Featured photo courtesy of Kimberly Seif.
“The main thing is for people to know that it is okay to not be okay. It’s okay to reach out for help, and that everybody needs help. It’s how we survive,” Krafft said. “That’s why our little tagline is, ‘Everyone needs help swimming upstream.’”