Depression has been a bane in my student community. It has grossly affected the mental health of students, leading to a decline in academic performance and is negatively impacting the learning process of students as a whole.

Every semester, at least 20 students engage in self harm activities including smoking, taking hard drugs, excessive drinking, and even attempted suicide. Also, it is estimated that about 5 students commit suicide because of depression and its related issues every academic year. These statistics are in essence, very saddening.

My project aims to curb the effects of depression - especially self harm, suicide and ills such as smoking, substance abuse and drinking associated with depression. This will further improve the learning process of students in the school environment by improving their mental health and promoting SDG 3 - Good health and well-being.

My project, ‘Your Depression Hotline’ aims to accomplish this goal in various ways. An awareness campaign would be organized and the student community of my campus will be sensitized and enlightened on practical ways of dealing with depression that does not culminate in self harm.
Students will be encouraged to share their depression stories with us and the student community. Some of these stories will be shared publicly and anonymously in the school paper, department magazines/social media handles and other forms of media as well. The aim is to create a kindred spirit among students going through depression; to help them realize that we might feel lonely but we are never alone in our depression stories.

This project will create an avenue for students not only to share their depression stories with each other but also with professionals to provide counsel and other forms of professional assistance to help them get through the phase of depression. Depressed students will also receive counseling and advice on how best to deal with depression. This will help us build a community of students prepared to battle it.

For the duration of the project, we will be partnering with the Mental Health Advocacy team of my university (Delta State University, Abraka) to provide professional counseling services to depressed students and to increase the reach and impact of our project. Asides facilitating a weekly counseling session to depressed students, a contact address will be made public to the student community so depressed students can reach out to us and share their depression stories both with us and the student community at large and receive counseling to help them deal with depression.

This project will be carried out on the main campus of Delta State University and it will cut across all 7 of the faculties present on campus; and we aim to reach an average of 20 students every week for the duration of the 3 months of the program and a total average of 240 students by the end of the project.