University of Connecticut Athletics
The AAC’s Powerful Minds Initiative
10/15/2019 1:31:00 PM | General
This week is Mental Health Awareness Week, and the American Athletic Conference is holding its Powerful Minds initiative to spread awareness about mental health issues and ending the stigma surrounding them.
This initiative is promoted on campus here at UConn by the Student-Athlete Advisory Committee. This committee acts as the voice of student-athletes to the NCAA, and it also does a lot of fundraising and community outreach. This week, members of the committee have a table set up in the Student Union with prizes and information about services on campus for those dealing with mental health issues.
The president of the Student-Athlete Advisory Committee here at UConn is Peter Garmon, a four-year member of the track and field and cross country teams. As a student-athlete who has seen teammates dealing with mental health issues, he said the Powerful Minds initiative is very important to him.
"I've seen firsthand some people that have been struggling that could just use the resources, that don't even know about the resources that we provide the student athletes in case they need someone to talk to," Garmon said. "I've seen the power it can have to really just talk to somebody. From a conference level, we spoke this summer and I got to see what it meant to everybody else and how it has affected everyone else in our conference. I think that's really what's driven me to get the word out."
Garmon said this initiative is a result of a lot of good ideas from his fellow members of the AAC's student-athlete committee, as well as the planning and hard work by his subcommittees on campus. He said they have more events and fundraisers planned this week to spread the word and end the stigma around mental illness. These include aromatherapy, yoga, pet therapy and a pie-an-athlete fundraiser. For a full schedule, visit the committee's instagram page @uconnsaac.
Mental health awareness is extremely important to everyone, but Garmon said for student-athletes, it can mean even more.
"For student-athletes, I think there's a stigma behind it that you have to be strong and no weakness," Garmon said. "You can't show any kind of weakness, and our initiative is really just geared towards ending that. Saying that if you do have mental illness, it's not a weakness, it's something we can work through."
