Suicide is a sensitive subject but a prevalent one.  

The Active Minds Send Silence Packing Exhibit is a national traveling exhibit about suicide awareness and prevention. Its stop Thursday was at EIU. 

The exhibits include backpacks attached to personal stories from people personally touched by suicide.  

“The stories are a powerful way to raise awareness. The donation of stories and backpacks can be a meaningful step for suicide loss survivors and others,” Active Minds says on its website. 

According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, one person dies every 11 minutes in the United States from suicide. 

These stories and the overall exhibit have shown success in making an impact.  

“Program survey data reveals that individuals leave Send Silence Packing wanting to learn more about mental health. Ninety five percent of survey respondents rate the exhibit as powerful and ninety-seven percent report it educational,” Active Minds says on its website. 

EIU’s exhibit had 100 backpacks and stories, according to Mathew Warner, the assistant director of the Health Education Resource Center within Health and Counseling Services at EIU. He helped coordinate the event with Active Minds. 

“Every so often, they just reach out to people that have had them before, and they’ve been to our campus before, and they just reached out to coordinate another visit,” Warner said.  

They took a new approach this year. Instead of having backpacks lined up all along the Library Quad, it was only in one section of it. 

“They used to do, I believe it was 1,000, it was before I was hired, so I’m not sure on that, but they used to line the entirety of the quad with backpacks, and the backpacks have stories associated with them,” Warner said. “But they’ve taken a different approach with the new setup, and they’ve lessened the amount of backpacks, but the stories are still present.” 

This different approach allowed for more warning when entering the exhibit, due to it covering a sensitive subject. 

However, many weren’t turned away and the display had an impact on EIU students. 

Zach Renaldi, a junior computer information technology major, mentioned how it was an eye-opening experience for him. 

“For me when I first read one, it really hit me emotionally and made me realize that all of us here are going through something, and that we’re not alone,” he said. “It’s good to talk about all this stuff, because it hurts.” 

The purpose of the exhibit is to also help students know they are not alone. 

Mark Pointer Jr., a freshman history education major, echoed the importance of this.  

“Mental health is important and us as students, we’re important, and people care about us,” said Pointer. “My personal experience, I’ve been through counseling, I’ve been through stuff like that. And it helps a lot to talk to somebody who cares, because mental health is important, and not many people talk about it that much in schools.” 

Mental health resources at EIU are the Health and Counseling Services Counseling Clinic that can be reached at 217-581-3413 or on its website. As well as the Health and Counseling Services Health Education Resource Center that can be reached at 217-581-7786 or on its website . 

“If individuals are looking for programming or training surrounding mental health, they can contact the HERC. We give a lot of presentations, and we have a lot of initiatives for that” Warner said. “We always encourage people to go to the counseling center as well if they need help. We just want to make clear that these resources are here for students.” 

Bryce Parker can be reached at at 581-2812 or at baparker2@eiu.edu.