Students pose with organization slogans at the Active Minds Mental Health Conference in Washington, D.C., in August.
Photo courtesy Active Minds
College students face a lot of challenges that can impact their mental health. Active Minds, a nonprofit organization based in Washington, D.C., is helping students on campuses in the city and across the U.S. navigate those stressors and improve their mental health.
Participants at APHA's 2025 Annual Meeting and Expo in November will be supporting the organization's work this fall. All contributions made to APHA's Help Us Help Them campaign, which allows attendees to give back to a nonprofit in the meeting's host city, will go to Active Minds.
The organization was founded in 2001 at the University of Pennsylvania by then-student Alison Malmon after her older brother, Brian, died by suicide. Malmon registered Active Minds in D.C. as a nonprofit organization and formed its first chapter at her university. Today, Active Minds has over 500 chapters at U.S. colleges — including four in the District of Columbia — and hundreds of programs in high schools.
“Our mission has always been to equip youth and young adults to lead the conversation around mental health so that we can change mental health culture,” Laura Horne, MPH, chief program officer of Active Minds, told The Nation's Health.
Many mental health problems start in adolescence and young adulthood. Yet only one-third of struggling college students receive care. Active Minds guides students on forming and co-leading campus mental health care programs for their peers.
Active Minds annually holds a mental health conference to offer college chapters an opportunity to exchange ideas to make programs better. Some chapters have successfully changed policies of campuses on mental health, Horne said.
Active Minds' peer-run model has been validated by outside sources. In 2018, the Journal of the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry published a study by the Rand Corporation that looked at over 1,100 students in Active Minds programs at a dozen California colleges. The study found that Active Minds improved mental health knowledge and reduced stigma.
“We need to rise to the occasion, not only for them, but with them,” Horne said. “They're our next leaders, and by investing in them, we're building a better future for all of us.”
Donations to the Help Us Help Them campaign can be made though the APHA 2025 registration process. People who have already registered and want to support Active Minds can log into their meeting registration and make a contribution.
For more information on Active Minds and work by its chapters, visit www.activeminds.org.
- Copyright The Nation’s Health, American Public Health Association
