Active Minds searched far and wide for the right people to represent the organization and Send Silence Packing during the Spring tour. We were lucky enough to find them in the amazing Brandon and the fantastic Nicole. For five weeks they hit the road on behalf of Active Minds.

In a truck, they traveled to 9 states. They set up 14 displays (with help from our wonderful Active Minds chapter members who generously volunteered their time). They distributed 28,660 educational items. They spoke to thousands of passersby about the program and often got more personal, sharing stories from their lives. They took hundreds of amazing pictures that made us feel like we were on the tour with them. And they blogged throughout, sharing their adventures from the road with all of us. On behalf of Active Minds, Inc., we wanted to thank them for their time, dedication, and spirit.

There were so many of you who volunteered your time, shared your stories, donated your services, and offered your support. We wanted to thank you too for helping make Send Silence Packing’s Spring 2011 Tour a huge success.

We spoke to thousands of people, garnered close to 100 news stories, including two stories that were picked up by the Associated Press, distributed hundreds of thousands of educational items – providing information on student mental health, suicide, specific mental health disorders, wallet cards advertising the national suicide prevention lifeline, information for survivors, information on how to help a friend and much more.

At each display we are inspired by the feedback and gratitude we receive from the visitors. We hope that Send Silence Packing helped empower you or someone you know to speak up and speak out about mental health and about suicide.  Listed below are a few highlights from the many comments we received.

• “This display is giving me the courage to speak”
• “[Send Silence Packing] makes me consider not killing myself”
• “Thank you for letting me be apart of this.  I’m living with mental illness…volunteering with this project makes me feel empowered to keep myself healthy and share my story so that others won’t feel so afraid to get help.  No one should have to go through this alone.”
• “I lost two close friends a year ago.  This is VERY helpful to get closure.  Thank you!”
• “Excellent, moving, infinitely worthwhile exhibit”
• “I feel that I am good right now, but if I ever do need help, I know where to go now and how to help a friend how might be in need.”
• “I was going through a crisis and this display was there when I needed it!”
• “It really made me think about a few people I know are having a hard time. And about a boy in my dorm I know who has a roommate the he believes is suicidal.  I’m really going to encourage him to get his roommate help.”

We really like to hear passersby feedback about the display. If you were at a stop and haven’t shared your thoughts with us please do here.

The Send Silence Packing truck is headed to California this fall! Keep checking back to see when dates and stops are announced!

And it closing, I think it is important to remember, “there is no health without mental health.” – World Health Organization

“Thank you”—We throw these words around quite a bit in our day to day life. There’s many different forms of the phrase. We use the same words for when a doctor saves a life and for when someone holds a door open.

At its weakest, It’s a casual automatic response lacking any real emotion. We use the words to fulfill social contracts throughout our days. A lot of times we don’t even look at the person we say it to.

Then there’s the rare kind. A “thank you” that comes with a deep sense of gratitude and humility. Throughout the tour we spoke with hundreds of people in detail about the program, the issue, and about our lives. These moments of spontaneous connection gave such an amazing range of perspective as we all shared our stories. But these weren’t the only meaningful interactions. At every display we would have a handful of people come up to us, look us in the eyes, and say “thank you.” Nothing else. It’s this form of those same two words that is so full of meaning that no further words are needed to express it.

It’s in that spirit that I’d like to thank you. Thank you for your time visiting and volunteering. Thank you for being a part of this movement. Thank you for following our adventure in spreading this message even if you couldn’t attend in person. Thank you for caring. None of this positive momentum would be possible without you.

Thank you for your stories—and for your strength.

Thank you.

Baltimore was our final stop and we couldn’t have asked for a better way to end the tour. Being in a city gives us an opportunity to reach a wider population than college students. Even though Active Minds is a college based organization, we know that mental health affects everyone and our city displays give a chance to reach out to more than students.

When we are doing our displays, it is amazing to notice the open and comfortable atmosphere we are creating for people to share their experiences. Being in Baltimore was an opportunity for us to hear stories from all walks of life. When people see what we are doing and the way we are opening a dialogue about mental health, they seem to be more open about their past with mental illness and ways they can continue to help themselves.

Most of the Active Minds staff was in Baltimore helping throughout the day. I continued to hear so many different stories that were shared with them by people coming to see the display. Many people that I spoke with said that they usually didn’t talk about what they had been through. People stated that  they were able to share with us because we could understand they had struggled and they were in an atmosphere where they were comfortable. I think that it is amazing that we are able to create such an atmosphere where people feel that they can share experiences with strangers.

Most of the places where we set up the display are outside and they cover a huge area. They are public settings, and we invite anybody to come through and  learn about suicide and mental health awareness. I am still amazed at every stop at what people are able to share in such a public setting. I think that it is remarkable that we are able to help people in the process of healing and story sharing in such a public place.

This concept is something important to remember in our everyday lives when we are talking with people from strangers to acquaintances to family members. When people know that others care, they are more willing to open up and share their feelings and struggles. Being in an atmosphere that is free of judgement sends a message that it doesn’t matter what someone is going through, there is someone there to listen. Sometimes that is all that anyone needs.

“What’s with all the bags?”

You’ll overhear this a lot as students round a corner or exit a building and notice the Send Silence Packing display. 1,100 backpacks take up quite a bit of space and they certainly grab people’s attention when they see them laid out from a distance.

Luckily, we’ve got a fantastic network of local Active Minds members and other volunteers posted around to tell people what exactly is “up with all the bags” and bring them into the display. At West Chester University we had a large group of passionate advocates available inform the rest of their community about this issue.

I think something that helps make Active Minds’ 332 (at the time of writing) chapters such a success are the fact that they focus on allowing the students to run the chapter and work with their peers. While they do work with advisors, counseling centers, the national office, and other groups on campus, the majority of what each chapter does is student run. I’ve consistently noticed how effective it is to have peer advocacy on these campuses. In a university setting, and even just young-adulthood in general, a lot of things come from the top down, and it’s easy to tune a lot of that out. When your classmate, roommate, or just someone going through the same college life as you asks for your attention though, it feels relevant.

Many students are more open to listening to fellow students, and Send Silence Packing gives us an opportunity to see the power of a large group of fellow students saying “We’re here and we’d like to tell you about something we think is important for all of us.”

Throughout the day we saw thousands of West Chester students come through the display, and as momentum picked up towards the afternoon, something interesting happened. Facebook, texts, and old fashioned word-of-mouth messages were sending in waves and waves of other students to come see the display. Instead of students just happening to find the display, people were coming because the word was spreading and people cared about the message—and that’s how positive changes spread.

When we pulled into Ramapo College, we were greeted by about 25 people ready to help unload the truck and set up the display. This was the largest amount of volunteers that we have had at and display, especially for 8 am! We had fantastic weather throughout the day and the campus was amazingly beautiful. We finally had a warm sunny day on the tour! The weather told us it was time to clean up when it began raining at exactly 4:02, a whole two minutes after the scheduled clean-up started.

Throughout the day, groups of people continued to show up to volunteer. We had a lot of volunteers that stayed through most of the display and most stayed for about half the day. When I talked to the volunteers, a lot of them mentioned that it was very easy to get a lot of people to volunteer for the event because of the sense of community that the campus has. The counseling center was there throughout the day as well as members from LEARN. They were so supportive of the students that were part of Active Minds and worked together to make the display the best it could be.

I heard one of the Active Minds members telling a few of the volunteers that he enjoyed being part of the organization and really liked working with the national office because of the feeling of community. He said that at Active Minds it is a “we’re all doing this together” experience. Whether he was working with the Ramapo chapter, at the conference, or talking to a member at the national office he knew that he was appreciated individually and that he was a part of a whole.

Throughout the tour, it has been great to have that sense of community with the people that we work with at each stop. From the moment I walked into the office in DC, I knew that I was in a comfortable and accepting atmosphere. I believe that we took this feeling through the tour and became an Active Minds family with all of the chapters that we visited. This view of interacting with each person and making a welcoming and pleasant environment is something that has easily been established among Brandon and myself, the Active Minds members, and their volunteers.

Ramapo also hosted a Wellness Walk through the beautiful campus for about an hour during the display. Celena Gray, Executive Director of the NJ Governor’s Council on Mental Health Stigma, spoke before the walk. She talked about what New Jersey was doing for mental health and shared inspiring words with the walkers. The walk highlighted areas on campus that students could go to focus on mental health, relax, and take care of themselves. A few of the places they visited were: the counseling center building, the campus recreation center and gym, and the Salameno Spiritual Center.

There were several moments of education throughout the day and the volunteers showed their dedication to the display through their interactions with the students that visited. The Ramapo chapter sold bracelets with each color representing students’ experience with personal mental health. The students’ interest in showing their support really conveyed how dedicated they were to learning more about mental health, suicide, and mental illness.

Send Silence Packing brings a powerful and emotional message to college campuses as well as being a positive resource to students. Active Minds members work hard to educate students on resources they can use as well as ways to be a resource to peers. Seeing the ways that Active Minds has motivated students to work toward a bigger feeling of community on campus makes me realize how easy it is to inspire someone to inspire others.