PODCASTS FOR MENTAL HEALTH
BY DANNY DICKERSON.
The inspiration
When I started my first year of college, I realized that while my high school may have told me what to expect academically, it did not tell me what to expect mentally. I was thrown into a new world of stress, and anxiety, and I even started to have trouble eating. There were days when I wished someone had just given me a pamphlet or something to listen to that would have at least given me some insight into what to expect. Over the years, I have found my own way to cope, however, I still feel like most new college students didn’t know what to expect. In an attempt to be that voice, I think most need I decided to create a podcast that shed some light on the most common mental health issues of college academic life.
Final Product
In my time at Champlain College, I have noticed flyers around the school talking about mental health clubs or little pop-up places to find help. In my head, I thought.
Not everybody will go to these because not everyone wants to be around people. This simple thought made way o an amazing idea. I decided to create the series College Mental health talk by Danny Dickerson. This podcast would have a 7–9 minute podcast talking about the more common issues of mental health when it came to being a college student. I talked this idea through with some teachers and my family and decided to make it my Psychology Capstone. I took everything I had learned over the years and created episodes. I started this with the goal being that I could reach many budding college students, however as I have ended I feel as if these podcasts could really be for anyone who is struggling with the issues that I talked about. I wanted to help and to have people see and hear what I had to say. I also wanted people to know that they weren’t alone in their problems and that other people dealt with them too.
I first chose 5 different subjects to talk about, (anxiety, stress, insomnia, eating issues, and burnout.) Each of these podcasts has 2–3 sources in them, all reliable. I made sure to only keep the podcast from 7–9 minutes long to help keep the listener engaged. I also made sure to state helplines on my podcast site and at the end of each episode because there were subjects that could be triggering to some. I began using the sources I had found to create a structure for my podcasts that I could use for any of them. This structure looked like an intro, what would be discussed on that podcast, a short personal story that had to do with the subject, symptoms, coping mechanisms, and lastly the end. I wanted this podcast to keep a similar structure for each one; so I created a script for each subject and used it as a guideline. Here is an excerpt from my anxiety script.
According to an article by Michelle Friedman and Dena Westphalian more than 36% of college students in 2020 suffered from moderate to severe anxiety. This means that a very large population of college students Generally suffer from anxiety. This is an important demographic
to remember because it means you are not alone…..
I also tried to put a bit of my humor and myself in this podcast because humor is the best medicine even in the darkest times. Using the knowledge I found, help from peers and professors, and finding a good podcast website, I created a podcast series with my research and found joy in speaking. The way I have been marketing this podcast is by putting up links on my social media pages. I am hoping my podcast will be picked up by some college freshman help groups and used as a way to give advice. I am also just hoping it ends up on those who need it.
The goal of this podcast is to reach those who need it and hope they start college or a new day in their life knowing that they are not alone and that someone out there has created an outlet for them.
