By Patrick Ong
To raise awareness for World Suicide Prevention Day, Project OCEAN, a non-profit mental health awareness organization, and Student Health Services tabled in Maxson Plaza on Tuesday.
“Suicide is one of the leading causes of death among college students,” Autumn Lewis, a peer educator for Counseling and Psychological Services, said.
According to collegestats.org, 50% of college students report their mental health being below average or poor.
Project OCEAN—which stands for On-Campus Emergency Assistance Network—is a peer-run non-profit that is housed and coordinated by CSULB Counseling and Psychological Services.
Their peer educators, which are comprised of both undergraduate students and graduate students, handed out zines and posters that promoted self-love to students walking by. They also gave out temporary tattoos of semicolons in honor of Project Semicolon; an organization whose goal is to help reduce the rate of suicide.
“Just as when you’re writing, and you want to continue a sentence, you place that semicolon and you continue living.” Nick Duran, a graduate peer educator for Project OCEAN, said.
OCEAN program coordinator, Alexandria Pan puts a temporary tattoo on Tracy Lguyen, a forth-year health care administration major for World Suicide Prevent Day, Tuesday. Austin Brumblay / Daily Forty-Niner.
CAPS offers mental health services for CSULB students that can be utilized at any time.
“There are so many reasons why people could seek help that are just not limited to having a diagnosable mental illness,” Duran said. “We’re here to let people know that these services are available to them, [and] that there is no shame in seeking mental healthcare.”
Rachel Barnes, news editor, contributed to this article.
