The Mental Health Initiative

by The Temple News

Thirty thousand students, one common problem. Introducing The Temple News' Mental Health Initiative.

Every time I walk by the Bell Tower on Temple’s campus, I remember the scene on Dec. 6, 2021 — my freshman year. Temple had lost five students during the semester, one of those to students gun violence near campus.

The day after the vigil, students at Temple were expected to keep moving forward, told to “keep their head up” like nothing had happened. Emails from university leaders told us that they were thinking about us.

I remember the day vividly. I had always dreamed of going away for college and I had finally accomplished that dream. Then five of my peers, fellow students with dreams and aspirations and families that loved them, were dead. I never met any of the five students that lost their lives during the Fall of 2021 but I couldn’t just keep moving forward like nothing had happened.

Now a senior at Temple and Editor-in-Chief of The Temple News, I lived through the same experience yet again. The university has lost a number of students this semester, including one who was tragically and senselessly killed by another student. Days later a student was stabbed more than a dozen times in a frat house. This is not normal.

These senseless deaths and acts of violence firstly impact the families of the victims. But they also affect those who never even met them.

That’s why The Temple News spent the last several months putting together a staff-wide special issue to report on the mental health challenges faced by Temple students and those in the community. This initiative is the result of months of rigorous reporting and conversations. The project began last year when The Temple News received a grant from the Solutions Journalism Network as part of its Student Media Challenge. That grant helped fund the research, reporting, staffing and print costs to create the initiative.

With more than a dozen stories, this initiative sheds light on the mental health struggles of student athletes, international students, how faculty members are trained to be on the front lines of the mental health crisis, what Temple is doing, how students cope and so much more.

While this initiative isn’t going to single-handedly solve the overarching mental health problem among college students, hopefully it’s a step forward toward that future. We hope this project is a beacon of hope, a resource and a way to let students know that they aren’t alone.

At the end of the day, we’re all we’ve got.

— Samuel O’Neal, Editor-in-Chief