SCS Mental Health Initiative Centers Gratitude, Kindness, Self, and Communal Care

A recent article, “Jesuit Education Offers Tools to Meet the Mental Health Crisis,” both illuminates the scale of the mental health challenges being experienced today by students and offers hope by suggesting resources from the Jesuit tradition of education for addressing these challenges. The article’s author, Mary-Catherine Harrison, a faculty member at Jesuit peer institution University of Detroit Mercy, diagnoses the many contributors to high levels of mental distress. These factors include entrenched inequality, climate change, normalization of gun violence, surge in hate crimes, a rise in addictions, divisive public discourse, pervasiveness of social media influence, and the COVID-19 pandemic. For Harrison, there is a temptation to present the “new gospel of ‘self care’” as the solution to this crisis. While taking care of one’s own health and wellness is clearly an important action, the error of presenting this approach as a cure-all for the pandemic of mental illness, according to Harrison, is that it presents an “individual cure for a collective disease.” So what then is the right collective response, especially in a university setting, to the mental health crisis? 

SCS staff members Frances Bajet and Crystal Leung set up an activity table in the C2 atrium as part of a “Share the Love” mental health initiative at SCS. A wall of gratitude captured posted notes. 

The Jesuit tradition of education has a lot to say about caring for a university community at a time like this. Harrison pulls out three particular ideas. First, classrooms that build bonds between students and teachers, between classroom learning and the lived experiences of communities beyond the four walls of the university foster deeper, more meaningful connections for students. This kind of connection creates community that “protects mental health. This is not a peripheral goal of education; it is at the very heart of what we do.” Second, Ignatian pedagogy, or the unique style of teaching and learning in the Jesuit tradition (see this Mission in Motion for more about it), integrates a whole-person approach to learning that can help students make connections between their lived experience and the content of their coursework. The effect of this approach is gifting students with a “framework for self-actualization and meaningful vocation.” Third, a Jesuit education can both prioritize the unique individual needs of students, on the one hand, and challenge social and institutional structures to change their ways, on the other. Harrison invites us to consider and push back against the various ways within universities themselves and in broader society that students might interpret their value strictly in terms of productivity and not in their “inherent value as human beings.” 

This SCS initiative epitomizes an approach to caring for the community that arises out of the Jesuit tradition of education.

This week, SCS put these ideas into action with a multi-day mental health initiative framed as “Share the Love.” An activity table, placed in the C2 atrium, invited students, faculty, and staff to engage with their goodness by sharing it with others. Participants were given the opportunity to write a kindness card to cheer up a child affected by pediatric cancer and cards will be donated to the Valentine Project. Activities also included a gratitude wall to post notes about reasons for gratitude. And finally, the initiative invited individuals to share their health and wellness practices on social media so as to encourage others to follow. All of these activities point to the need in this current mental health crisis for connections and community, self care and community care. 

Some of the creative kids crafted by the SCS community for the Valentine Project.

Current students who are looking to foster even more of these connections should consider signing up for the upcoming SCS student retreat taking place from March 12-13 at the Calcagnini Contemplative Center. Please sign up by March 4, 2022!