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“It’s sort of like going to a dentist for a toothache, I guess – you ignore it until you can’t, and by the time you can’t, you need a root canal.”
This is one of the insightful, humorous, and sometimes heart-wrenching accounts that student service members and veterans shared about their mental health experiences in a research project led by recent CUNY SPH graduate Magdalen Harris (MS Health Communication for Social Change ’22).
Published in the Journal of American College Health, the article discusses barriers and facilitators to mental health care based on 21 interviews of veteran and service member students recruited online and via snowball sampling. The project evolved during Magdalen’s time in the MS program and culminated with her Capstone project.
“Most of our health communication students produce extensive plans for their Capstone project, but Magdalen chose the research route,” says Clinical Professor Chris Palmedo, co-director of the MS in Health Communication for Social Change program. “We hope her work will eventually help students with military experience navigate on-campus mental health environments.”
Magdalen is now a doctoral student at the University of Otago, where she will bring the skills she developed at CUNY SPH to the under-researched field of New Zealand veterans’ mental health.
