For the past three years, Dorothy Espelage, Ph.D., William C. Friday Distinguished Professor of Education, and school psychology doctoral students have led undergraduates in a course titled “Sources of Strength,” a first-of-its-kind course at Carolina aimed at promoting mental health on the Carolina campus.
The course draws from Sources of Strength, a best practices youth suicide prevention program designed to harness the power of peer social networks to change unhealthy norms and culture. In class during the spring 2024 semester, Espelage and school psychology student Luz Robinson introduced research on mental health from a number of fields and provided students a space to explore varying facets of mental health in their individual and collective lives.
According to Espelage, the class is offered every fall and spring. For fall 2024, enrollment is set at 120 students, and seats are still available.
Mackenzie Warren, a Robertson Scholar from Houston who took undergraduate classes at both Carolina and Duke University, completed the “Sources of Strength” this spring and reflects below on how she plans to carry its lessons into her future after graduating with a degree in psychology in May 2024.
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I’m at a pivotal point in my life. I just graduated from college and am transitioning to adulthood, and I feel like I now have a clean slate for revamping my life in ways that prioritize my mental health.
For the past four years, I have been a Robertson Scholar. My home base was at Duke for most of that time, but I lived on Carolina’s campus during the spring semester of my sophomore year.
Throughout college, I can honestly say that my mental and physical health weren’t always a priority in the way I desired for them to be. All the students who get into Carolina and Duke, we are high achievers who are driven academically and who are super ambitious. Being in demanding academic environments, it is too easy to get caught up in toxic mindsets such as “I need to get the best grades” or “I need to craft the best, most competitive resume.” I was no exception to falling prey to these aforementioned mindsets; consequently, I was at the library all the time—eating out of vending machines, sacrificing time with my friends, and not exercising or moving my body in beneficial ways.
When I heard about Dorothy Espelage’s, Ph.D., “Sources of Strength” course in the UNC School of Education, I thought it could help me take better care of myself and set me up well for healthy habits in my final semester and in my post-grad future. Going into the course, I hoped to learn about protective factors against burnout, since I have a rigorous future ahead of me.
In the next two years, I plan to go into another academically demanding environment – law school. After taking the LSAT and working with at-risk youth in my hometown, Houston, my ultimate dream is to become a lawyer who advocates for disadvantaged and underprivileged children who struggle in systems that don’t work for them, such as the juvenile justice and child welfare systems. What I’ve learned in the “Sources of Strength” course has afforded me the skills and tools to operate at peak productivity and efficiency, as well as achieve a healthy work-life balance, in this next chapter of my life.
Sources of Strength takes a different approach than most mental health programs. It’s peer-driven and strengths-based and provides a prevention-focused, upstream solution to mental health crises. We explore eight different Sources of Strength – including generosity, physical health, spirituality, and more – how those sources create impact in our lives, and how we can intentionally incorporate them into our everyday routine to help us maintain good mental health.
Dorothy and Luz created a classroom environment – one of transparency, authenticity, and vulnerability – that I’ve never before experienced in a class. We talked about how to be honest with yourself and others when you’re struggling. We also talked about the healthy habits we’re good at, which Sources of Strength those habits align with, and then how to keep capitalizing on those habits.
The course taught me that I don’t have to be committed to all eight Sources of Strength. Rather, what’s most important is that I keep harnessing the benefits of the particular strengths that best work for me. For example, going to the gym and spending time with my friends are non-negotiables for me; as such, those are the first things I try to build into my schedule, and then work and everything else fall into place around that. At night, my last hour before bed is also included in my schedule as an allotted time for me to do gratitude journaling, breathing exercises, and relaxing hobbies like reading. Incorporating my favorite Sources of Strength into my schedule comes from a place of not just passively hoping for available time to practice healthy activities. I’ve got to carve out that time myself, which requires a level of thoughtfulness and intentionality.
I’m a very logic-brained person, meaning I value the science and the research behind bold claims. Don’t just tell me to go to the gym because it’s good for me. I want to know why it’s good for me. Tell me about the neurogenesis that happens in my brain when I’m getting my heart rate up on a treadmill three times per week. Tell me about how consistently exercising will protect me from degenerative diseases in older age. Don’t simply tell me that humans should pursue quality friendships because people are good for people. Go deeper than that, and inform me of the longitudinal study that says when people are 80 and sitting on their porch reflecting on their life, they find that relationships matter more to them than work. All this to say, Dorothy and Luz created the buy-in for me with Sources of Strength by actually digging into the literature and the research findings from across diverse fields. Furthermore, it was incredible to hear from Dorothy and Luz about their own research in prevention science to protect the mental health and well-being of young people.
One other thing about the class (there are so many!) that had a profound impact on me was the assigned campaign project. Students of the course are expected to be liaisons for what we learn in class, designing a project grounded in one of the Sources of Strengths and then sharing it with the UNC community.
My partner and I focused our project on gratitude and generosity. We “set up shop” outside of Peabody Hall; random people would stop by our table; and we then assigned them a gratitude prompt where they would either text somebody they haven’t talked to in a while, call somebody they love, or write a postcard to someone they care about and miss. To see how gratitude and generosity could put the biggest smile on somebody’s face was a beautiful manifestation of what I was learning in class: people benefited, even in just a short timeframe, from showing gratitude.
Interestingly, we also saw people who passed by our table and claimed not to have the time to express gratitude. There were more people than you probably could imagine who gave this excuse as they urgently rushed to their next destination. My heart squeezed when I saw those people because honestly before this class, I would have been one of them. I wouldn’t have had time to stop for gratitude; I would have brushed off the campaigners as I said, “I am heading to class” or “Sorry, I have to study at the library.” During the campaign, I realized that I desperately don’t want to be one of those people who are so locked into the hustle that I can’t take three minutes to express gratitude to a loved one. That was a powerful realization for me.
Sources of Strength and what I learned in the class have really empowered me to tackle the inevitable hurdles fearlessly, challenges, and stress my life will bring. In my post-grad chapter, I intend to focus on continuously cultivating my strengths (i.e. going to the gym, nurturing strong relationships, being prayerful and meditative, and slowing down to practice gratitude and generosity). By doing so, I can and will overcome anything difficult that comes my way.