Removing and educating about the stigmas that exist about mental illness is the goal of the National Alliance on Mental Illness at El Paso and the NAMI branch at UTEP.

NAMI is an organization that began in 1979 with the participation of family members of people who had a mental illness. The UTEP branch began in 2013.

Both organizations do volunteer service and offer help to their members and to people who attend their courses and trainings. They create an environment of support to persuade their members that there’s hope for their illnesses and having a mental illness is as important as having any other type of illness.

“Most mental illness cases begin in your early to mid-20s, so that’s your target population,”  said Yareiry Alba, senior biological sciences major and president of NAMI at UTEP. “That’s one of the main reasons why NAMI on campus is so important, because when people are first being diagnosed with mental illness, it is happening when they’re in college.”

Depression and the incidences of suicide are high among high school and college students. That is why NAMI is planning to start a program, where they will visit high schools in El Paso in order to advocate to students about mental illness.

“The most common mental illness for students are depression and anxiety,” said Ashley Rodriguez, senior psychology major and board member of NAMI El Paso and co-adviser of NAMI at UTEP.

NAMI offers free classes about suicide prevention courses and trainings.  Their focus is to educate people about what mental illness is.

Workshops from QPR (question, persuade and refer) training also known as suicide prevention trainings are offered for families and are open to any person who has a friend or a family member that lives with a mental illness.

Express Your Stress is a program offered during finals week and offers de-stressing techniques and is open to any student.

“We’ve had zumba, we’ve had yoga and we’ve had painting in the past,” Alba said. “We’re thinking about having puppies this spring for the students to de-stress from finals.”

Mental illnesses like depression, can be as serious as any other illness and can cause a rollercoaster of emotions causing the sufferer to  disengage from others.

John,  junior, asked that his last name not be used when he spoke about his experiences with depression.

“When I first started with my depression, it all started with me feeling very sad all the time–just wanting to cry for no reason–the things that used to make me happy didn’t any more,” he said.  “I no longer had interest in anything and that made me feel even worse. The fact that I would share this with my family, they thought I was being dramatic and overreacting.”

The main focus of the mental illness is the treatment. It is harder to find the right treatment for mental illness than it is for any other illness since many treatments make it worse.

“My doctor prescribed Zoloft that, to be quite honest, it made me feel worse,” John said.  “I felt like a zombie and numb, with no feelings at all.”

UTEP NAMI offers a variety of classes, called NAMI basics, which are targeted to parents of kids who are living with a mental illness. For those, the most common ones are Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder.

“We bring hope because some of our members live with mental illness and they’re in recovery so they’re able to share their stories,” Alba said. “They talk to other students that also live with mental illnesses and they give them hope.”

Fernanda De Leon may be reached at [email protected].