Giving Compass' Take:

• Ella Baron conducted interviews with college students and drew a series of sketches depicting the mental health crisis that is impacting college students. 

• How do visual aids help spur conversation and action around difficult topics? 

• Find out how Active Minds is working to address the mental health crisis on campuses across the country. 

The students are seated in neat rows. Left elbow in, right elbow out, head slightly tilted. Then, a figure out of line: lying down, arms flailing. Drowning.

Illustrator Ella Baron conducted a series of interviews with college students, many who had suspended their studies because of mental health concerns, to create a series of sketches about the mental health crisis at colleges, listening to the recordings as she drew. The images, published in  June 2017 in The Guardian, are as pointed as they are perplexing, parsing the intricacies of mental health in ways that provide a unique access point for viewers.

According to a 2015 report, between 2009 and 2015 the number of students seeking counseling services increased nearly 30 percent.

Schools are trying to respond.

“The causes and the solutions aren’t clear-cut,” Baron says. “It’s not like the flu, so eat more spinach and take your medicine.” Effective institutional changes will be grounded in an understanding of students’ lived experiences.

Baron’s sketches are a rare invitation to explore these perspectives and the tension, nuance, and possibility they hold. “Even if it isn’t a better way, it’s a different way, and that in itself is a good thing,” she says.

Read the full article about the college mental health crisis by Krista Karlson at YES! Magazine.