USG adds mental health events to orientation

The Undergraduate Student Government has started a new mental health initiative with the objective of exposing freshmen at orientation to mental health concerns via awareness talks and events.

Christine Hasrouni, director of USG Wellness Affairs, is leading the project. Hasrouni recently attended a meeting with Vice President of Student Affairs Ainsley Carry, Assistant Vice Provost for Student Affairs Lynette Merriman and members of the board of trustees where the plan was discussed.

“One of the things Dr. Carry said was, ‘We need to focus on freshmen,’” Hasrouni said. “What better way to start talking about mental health than at freshman orientation and Welcome Week? That’s basically the only time when they’re all together, and we can get them all in a room and talk about it.”

Hasrouni said one of the features of the mental health orientation sessions would be a student panel composed of upperclassmen, who would talk about the issues they encountered during their USC years.

“When you’re coming in as a freshman in college, you are really looking for peers and their companionship, and when you have an administrator it almost feels like someone is giving you a lecture,” Hasrouni said. “But if you hear it from someone who has just gone through it, it feels more real … you listen more to people your own age sometimes.”

Hasrouni said the panel would deal with problems such as not finding your niche, discovering that you are not in the top 3 percent of your class anymore due to increased competition and realizing that your educational desires might be different from those of your parents.

Another change will be the modification of the SCits, which are student-performed skits at orientation that deal with topics such as sexual assault, peer pressure and drug and alcohol abuse. Hasrouni is planning on adding more skits related to mental health.

“I believe that they had [skits] in the past that dealt with mental health, but they didn’t think that it truly represented what they wanted it to,” Hasrouni said. ”So, they’re going to be sending out this script and see if maybe we can edit it and tweak it so that it really fits what we’re looking for,” Hasrouni said.

In addition, Hasrouni wants to change Welcome Week’s sexual assault training sessions. She is hoping to have a counselor come in during the last 10 minutes of the training to talk about the counseling center and how to book an appointment.

“We were thinking about presenting this information to freshmen during orientation but freshmen are thrown with so much administrative information that I don’t think they would remember, ‘Oh yeah, we call, and then there’s a 30-minute phone screening,’” Hasrouni said.

Hasrouni also explained how mental health awareness should be emphasized in International Student Orientation, in an effort to remove the cultural stigma surrounding counseling.

“Counseling can sometimes be considered a Western idea, and a lot of international students from various cultures have a stigma against going to the counseling center, [thinking] that it’s almost shameful to go,” Hasrouni said. “So we introduce it to them at international orientation to hopefully get more traction, so they won’t be as afraid to maybe make that phone call. Maybe we can explain that it’s totally private that if they go to the counseling center no one will know, except the counselor.”

Hasrouni stressed the importance of these changes.

“I’m really excited for this panel to talk about what’s real, because sometimes going through Welcome Week, orientation, it’s all, ‘This is why USC is great’ and sometimes it is not great,” Hasrouni said. “Sometimes I think it’s important to look at the times [college] gets hard.”

Camille Tenerife, a first-year master’s student studying marriage and family therapy, said she welcomed the new initiative.

“I agree with it. I think there’s definitely a stigma around mental health, and a lot of students don’t know about it or don’t want to seek assistance, but if it’s placed in and normalized, then I think they’re more likely to seek out the help and utilize the resources,” she said. “Everyone can use some sort of assistance, especially when transitioning to college.”

Mona Xia, a junior majoring in critical studies, said that though she liked the idea of emphasizing mental health at orientation, she fears the message will fall on deaf ears.

“I think it can go one of two ways — it can either go well and actually be useful, or it can be kind of like those sexual assault mandatory screenings where people don’t really take it very seriously. It’s a shame because I think it’s a very important message,” she said. “I think it depends on the execution of everything, but I think it’s a good idea.”