| On Wednesday, over 100 students at Pierce College in Los Angeles gathered for a NAM forum on struggling with depression as a college student. In the spring and summer of 2015, NAM partnered with the Pierce College Media Arts Department and the Pierce Health Center on a storytelling project to break silence around depression among students in college. A cohort of journalism students conducted a survey of 200 of their peers on depression, stigma, and mental health treatment, and then produced a series of stories about Pierce students dealing with depression in their own lives or in the lives of their friends and families. The stories were collected in a journal that was distributed at the forum, and are also being posted to http://feelbetterca.org/tag/pierce-college/
At the forum, the journalism students spoke about their experiences participating in the project, and several of the students who were profiled in the stories gave personal testimonies on their experiences with depression. There was also a panel of experts, including Dr. Niaz Khani of the Pierce Health Center, Dr. Andrea Letamendi of Hathaway-Sycamores, attorney Nancy Shea of Mental Health Advocacy Services, and Michelle Rittel and Terica Roberts of the LA County Department of Mental Health.
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