San Jose State University’s Active Minds organization hosted a “Send Silence Packing” event with hundreds of backpacks spread out over Tower Lawn on Tuesday, with the stories of young adults who died by suicide displayed on each backpack.
Active Minds is a national nonprofit created in 2003, promoting mental health awareness and education for young adults through its affiliated campus chapters, according to its website. The first Send Silence Packing event was launched in 2008, and has been put on by different universities in the U.S. since then.
Emily Perrow, national Send Silence Packing display coordinator, said she travels across the U.S. to present the event in different universities.
“We aim to hit about 100 schools every year,” Perrow said.
The organization aims to promote suicide prevention by sharing stories, providing resources, inciting help-seeking and motivating students to advocate for better mental health resources on their campus.
“We're trying to not just spread awareness, but also to motivate people to [take actions] for better resources,” Perrow said.
Sarah Strader-Garcia, counseling and psychological services therapist and advisor for the Active Minds SJSU chapter, said the display on Tower Lawn aims to incite students to reach out to mental health services, on and off campus.
“We hope that people can come here and experience the impact of seeing all these backpacks and the stories of the people,” Strader-Garcia said. “It's a very powerful experience to walk around and really read about what their lives were.”
The third leading cause of death in 2020 for those aged 15-24 was suicide, according to a 2020 Centers for Disease Control and Prevention report.
Ria Ramani, psychology junior and SJSU Active Minds vice president, said college students’ mental health can deteriorate because of a stressful study environment.
She added that the coronavirus pandemic also affected student mental wellness.
“We're just hoping that students can walk around, read these stories and just realize that they're not alone in their struggles,” Ramani said.
Madison Manez, communicative disorders and sciences junior and SJSU Active Minds publicist, said it’s important students are aware of campus resources.
“In our generation, people are talking about it more, but we want to encourage that discussion,” Manez said.
Many students stopped in front of the display on their way to class and read the personal stories on the backpacks.
Advertising sophomore Sandra Sabath said it was a “powerful” installation.
“I saw on Instagram that [Active Minds] posted about it, and I wanted to stop by and I'm glad I did,” Sabath said. “Seeing this visually is even more powerful because when you do talk about it, you just see numbers.”
Criminology senior Alexa Mateos said seeing the display “humanizes” people's stories.
“It just shows how important mental health is,” Mateos said. “And that we should check up on our friends.”
