When Counseling and Psychological Services launched the pilot of its peer wellness program back in 2018, it was envisioned as a way to expand the menu of options available to students beyond one-on-one therapy. The thinking was that individual therapy often carries a stigma that leads many to forgo seeking support. Moreover, research consistently demonstrates that students are actually more likely to reach out to their peers for common mental health needs, like relationship issues or class-related stress. Initially, the heart of the peer wellness program consisted of student support groups that were facilitated by a student facilitator who was trained by CAPS. The program got off to a fast start — attracting about a dozen peer mentors, who ran five regular, one-hour support groups.
A little over a year into that experiment, though, the pandemic hit, curtailing in-person interactions and creating a fog of isolation that left many young people starved for social interaction and experiencing greater rates of anxiety and depression. Like so many parts of our lives, the peer wellness program never returned to its pre-COVID form, as participation in the in-person support groups waned. Still, Tracy Gallardo, who’s been working as a CAPS mental health clinician since 2023 and now oversees the peer wellness program, says the CAPS staff remained big believers in the peer-based approach — especially given the stress students were now experiencing as they readjusted to in-person life. So the staff decided to retool the program. Now, instead of leading private support groups, the student mental health and wellness peer educators would try to reach students where they already were, often in low-key public settings. Most interestingly, Gallardo says they were often doing it via activities that didn’t scream 'mental health.'
Tabling events have become one of the bread-and-butter activities of the new-look peer wellness program. Walk through the Renick University Center on a given week and you’ll likely see the peer wellness educators doing things like coloring, building Lego kits or handing out goodie bags packed with destress supplies. Azaan Jamil, a recent grad who worked as a peer wellness educator in 2024-25, says the tabling events are intended to work on a few different levels. For starters, the activities are designed to be mild destressors in themselves: Stopping to color or build something out of Legos takes you out of your routine and your head for a moment and redirects your energy to something inherently more meditative. Second, for students who choose to do the activity there on the spot, it’s a chance to socialize and meet new people. Third, Jamil says it offers up a relaxed way to get the word out about the university’s mental health services. “Somebody might come up because they see Lego kits, but then they’re probably going to ask, ‘What are you guys about?’” he says. “So that’s your entry point to say, ‘We’re part of CAPS. Take this brochure. Keep it with you if you ever need anything.’”
In addition to tabling events, Gallardo says the peer wellness team has looked for opportunities to collaborate with other student organizations, campus units and community groups. This past year, for example, they worked with the a new student-organization-turned-nonprofit that’s focused on mental health education for Muslim Americans. Peer educators were also an essential part of the Environmental Interpretive Center’s Nature Walks for Mental Health, with one of the students leading a guided meditation during each event. Gallardo says peer wellness educators also regularly visit classrooms, where they do short presentations about mental health and CAPS. “We’ve noticed that if it’s a student making the presentation about the services we offer, we get a better response,” she says. “We get a lot of students coming into CAPS now saying it’s because they heard about it from a student in one of their classes.”
Jamil, who’s now applying to medical schools and wants to study psychiatry, also sees a lot of potential in this new approach. For starters, he thinks it can address the stigma issue, which he says is still a huge challenge, particularly in Muslim and other minority communities. “Notice we’re not saying, ‘Come color with us to help your mental health.’ It’s just, ‘Come color with us,’” he says. “It’s true that younger generations are more accepting that mental health issues are a thing. So at least we’re not in a state of denial. But it’s funny: I notice a lot of people will applaud a friend who’s seeing a therapist. But personally, if we’re struggling, we tell ourselves, ‘but I don’t need that.’” Moreover, Jamil says the low-key activities that aren’t explicitly branded as ‘mental health’ help people understand that mental health and wellness aren’t just about diagnosable conditions. “Coloring, building Legos, going for a hike — that’s preventative maintenance basically anyone is going to benefit from. But we need to learn to see it that way,” he says.
Jamil did make one observation about the tabling events that he finds a little troubling. When they were handing out Legos or coloring kits, the vast majority of students treated it as a grab-and-go thing rather than sticking around to do it in-person. He chalks some of that up to the fact that students are busy. But he also suspects students’ social skills — and even the desire to be social — atrophied during the pandemic. “Obviously, we need to respect people’s individual choices,” he says. “If they want to take something home and do it by themselves, that’s still good. But I think we’re missing an opportunity to get some of the benefits that come with being around each other. Let me put it this way: I think we’ve lost the ability to small talk. So many of our interactions have become planned. We structure them so we know what to expect, so we can be comfortable. But that unexpected interaction with someone you don’t know well, that requires you to leave our bubble. I think we need more of that.” Jamil thinks that’s another reason why simple wellness-related activities can be a good fit for the moment. When we’re sitting around coloring, the conversation doesn’t have to be super intense, because the primary focus is the activity, not each other. That lowers the social pressure, allowing conversation to ebb and flow in a relaxed manner. “It may be the training wheels we need to figure out how to be with each other again,” he says.
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Story by Lou Blouin
