Last week at TCU the main part of campus was littered with backpacks. It wasn’t a fraternity prank or lazy students but rather a nationally recognized traveling exhibit called Send Silence packing which is used to bring attention to the 1,100 students who die from suicide each year.

Each backpack has a personal story that represents and honors the memory of loved ones impacted by suicide.  The hope is that by  displaying backpacks with personal stories, Send Silence Packing will put a “face” to lives lost to suicide and carries the message that preventing suicide is not just about improving statistics, but also about saving the lives of daughters, sons, brothers, sisters and friends.

These backpacks are the brain child of Alison Malmon, whose brother, Brian, committed suicide in March 2000, when Alison was a Freshman at the University of Pennsylvania.  Following the suicide of her brother, Alison learned that Brian had been experiencing depression and psychosis for three years but had concealed his symptoms from everyone around him.

Recognizing that few Penn students were talking about mental health issues, though many were affected, Alison was motivated to change that culture on her campus. She wanted to combat the stigma of mental illness, encourage students who needed help to seek it early, and prevent future tragedies like the one that took her brother’s life. After searching unsuccessfully for existing groups that she could simply bring to her campus, Alison created her own and formed the non-profit Active Minds, Inc.

Today, eleven years later Active Minds, Inc. has grown with more than 400 campus chapters, hundreds of thousands of young adults all across the country are benefiting from the Active Minds model. As Alison says, “The work is never done.”  Alison has started and continued a conversation about mental health that is a beautiful legacy to her brother.

Charity Matters.

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