KICKING THE STIGMA: HOW A PURPLE ELEPHANT IS STARTING MENTAL HEALTH DISCUSSIONS AT INDIANA UNIVERSITY

College freshman orientation can be, well, disorienting. There’s an overwhelming number of people you’ve never met milling about while you’re going from booth to booth, trying to figure out what you’re going to do in a new environment just a few days removed from leaving home.

At Indiana University’s freshman orientation last August, that setting was punctured by a 10-foot purple elephant. An elephant, which, naturally, begged a question:

What’s the deal with the purple elephant?

Students who walked over to get an answer to that question were met with a question: What’s something you’re worried about being stigmatized for at Indiana?

Those students were encouraged to write their answers on a tile, which would become part of a mural. They were handed Taylor Swift-inspired friendship bracelets with affirmations on them. They got purple elephant henna tattoos. And they spent 15-20 minutes engaging with their mental health right at the start of college – all thanks to being drawn in by the purple elephant.

“The purple elephant campaign was more of an event to get younger, early college kids to advocate for their mental health,” Krisha Mattu, a sophomore student advisor for U Bring Change 2 Mind and president of the Hoosier Henna Club, said. “… I feel like a lot of kids, what they struggle with is opening up about mental health. And some people don’t really know how to have those conversations because it can be a taboo topic for them.”

The purple elephant campaign was created by Hoosier Henna and U Bring Change to Mind, student-led organizations at Indiana that advocate for mental health. Later in the fall, the purple elephant was again set up at a campus-wide event, with 300 students stopping by U Bring Change 2 Mind’s booth to engage with their mental health.

And members of these clubs, like Mattu, were able to embrace their full creative vision for the project thanks to a Kicking The Stigma Action Grant.

“Student clubs usually don’t have these resources,” said Bernice Pescosolido, a nationally-recognized expert on stigma, a professor at Indiana and an advisor for U Bring Change 2 Mind. “… It’s really for students, by students. And for them to come up with the messages – because nobody knows how to bring students in or what’s interesting to them than other students.

“So rather than having a lecture by some famous psychiatrist on mental health — the only people who would go to that are people who already care about mental health. And the whole purpose of U Bring Change 2 Mind is to integrate mental health into the fabric of campus, to make it safe and stigma-free, and to have students really be the leaders so that when they leave, they’re creating a generation of people who are not afraid to think about and talk about mental health.”

Starting a conversation about mental health with college students is challenging, yet important, work. Pescosolido said 30 percent of students will have a mental health episode at some point during college; the major age of onset of most serious mental illnesses is between 18-24 years old.

The campus in Bloomington is well-positioned to take on those challenges and create those conversations. In 2023, the Irsay Institute opened at Indiana; its meeting rooms are where U Bring Change 2 Mind operates. The Colts’ visible presence supporting mental health on campus, including with the Kicking The Stigma Action Grant received by U Bring Change 2 Mind, has helped more students think about and discuss their own mental health.

“The hardest people to get in the door are young men,” Pescosolido said. “And the thing that really draws them to a number of the things we do is our connection to the Colts. … The whole tie to the Colts opens this up to a whole group of students who would probably not have any connection with mental health. I think that’s incredibly important.”

The Kicking The Stigma Action Grant will allow U Bring Change 2 Mind to push its campaign forward in 2025 and beyond, too. A bright green elephant –

the color for mental health – will be added this year, and the Taylor Swift friendship bracelets will be replaced by something else appealing to college students. In 2026, another elephant – this one purple and green – will enter the mix.

And the success the purple elephant had in creating a conversation about mental health on campus, then, can be continued thanks to the Kicking The Stigma Action Grant.

“It made it feasible, the things that we needed to carry off these events, whether it was creating all of the materials needed for the mural to come out of the orientation, certainly the 10-foot elephant with all those things that are key to getting students to come into the discussion wouldn’t have been possible without the grant, because we just don’t have those kinds of resources for student clubs,” Pescosolido said. “And particularly during this period of time, it was absolutely crucial that we were able to do things that engage students rather than lecturing at them or putting things online, because it’s building those connections and those network ties that really inspire change in people.

“It’s hard to get college students to come to something. But this purple elephant was like a magnet.”