The North Dakota State Counseling Center is collaborating with the pharmacy department to host a study this year known as Photovoice. This project is aimed toward individuals who have been impacted by depression.
Photovoice allows students to express and document their journey through images captured in a week’s time. The images students take will be shared among a group setting.
With this activity, the departments ensure it will build support from the community and allow others to experience the difficulties of depression.
Although this type of program will be debuting for the first time at NDSU, the presence of depression on college campuses has been a persisting struggle.
“Depression, and other mood disorders, are the second most common disorders seen at college and university counseling centers around the country,” Bill Burns, the director of the NDSU Counseling Center, said.
Burns said with this illness students may experience a range of difficulties such as a diminishing performance in school work, collapsing self esteem, guilty feelings, a tendency to feel isolated and thoughts or attempts of suicide.
Shams Abow, a freshman at NDSU majoring in agricultural management, said she thinks many students aren’t educated enough on depression.
“People need to know what it feels like to be depressed, because I am not sure how I would feel if I was depressed,” Abow said.
The goal of Photovoice is to “empower participants by making their experience visible,” Burns said.
The counseling department finds this type of visual strategy successful. For the past four years, the counseling center has implemented studies focusing on the mental and physical perspectives of students.
Recruitment is currently ongoing for this program. The study will take place in October and November and last for approximately two months.
Twenty students will be selected for this study. This methodology is action-based, participants will participate in a total of six counseling sessions, three will be in a group setting.
As a result, the counseling center said there will be a large group session held on November 22 and the conclusions of the study will be shared with the campus committee immediately following.
Based on the results, Burns said counselors may use Photovoice in individual counseling sessions. More programs using this technique will occur in the future.