Get To Know Pacific’s Mental Health Promotion and Prevention Specialist
Pacific’s Student Counseling Center offers all students a variety of services and resources. To learn about those resources, The Pacific Index met with Mental Health Promotion and Prevention Specialist Graham Turner. He’s been with Pacific since April 2022 and has a lot of hope for the future of the center and students’ mental health. You may have seen Turner at the University Center on Mondays, where he has a table and is ready to answer students’ questions.
The Index: What is your role on campus?
Graham Turner: I work in the counseling center, under Student Affairs. My resources include three areas of coverage, and those areas are part of the Mental Health Promotions program. I work with logistical stuff like disseminating information about the Counseling Center, and I work to support and initiate mental health information campaigns and other things like that on campus. I also work with the OAD program, which seeks to raise awareness about alcohol and drug use, reduce risk, and lower use across campus and even our graduate programs. My third area of responsibility is suicide prevention and postvention. This is mostly behind the scenes that students don’t necessarily see or interact with, but one thing I do is host a lot of QPR (Question, Persuade, Refer) suicide prevention training.
The Index: What’s your background in mental health work?
GT: My undergraduate degree was in Women’s Gender and Sexuality Studies. Additionally, I have two master’s degrees. The first one is in couples and family therapy. I worked with schools and had a private practice, then I went back to grad school and worked in Portland public schools as a substitute and a special education teacher. All that happened during COVID. It was an interesting time to become a teacher.
The Index: Why is mental health important to you?
GT: Everyone experiences their own kind of mental health every day. For a very long time, especially in the United States, mental health was considered mysterious territory or territory that you don’t talk about. It’s important to talk about mental health and share our experiences—to share what it’s like to be alive and living inside of our time.
The Index: What’s one thing you want the students to know about the Counseling Center?
GT: I think when folks think about counseling and the Student Counseling Center, it’s almost always in the context of individual therapy—which the Center does a lot of. However, taking care of one’s mental health does not always look like going to therapy. You know, it might be developing a really close group of friends who you can rely on or having a person who you can always talk to. If a student is struggling, it’s likely that their peers are going to be some of the first folks they go to for support. I consider part of my job to be equipping students to support themselves in community with their peers.
The Index: What resources are available to students on campus?
GT: Aside from individual counseling, we’re trying to bring in more collaboration and multi-department events. Right now, we have QPR (Question, Persuade, Refer) suicide prevention trainings. They are empirically validated and recognized. We have our Wise Mind and Mindful Coping events, which are two different workshops that happen every term. We also have our BIPOC and Queer Let’s Talk programs, which are informal drop-in spaces. These offer students a more informal space to talk and to ask questions, and they are really accessible. We also have a First-Generation Support Group. There’s a thing called the “hidden curriculum,” which includes things like FAFSA or the Common Application that students whose parents have not gone to college do not actually know about because they haven’t interacted with them before. So the First-Gen Support Group is new this year, and that’s with our new staff psychologist Amanda Guerrero. We’re hoping to also host more events for students to look forward to.
— Sophia Lewis
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