Julia Sand/ Winonan

Winona State University’s Active Minds club held the first Mental Health Monologue fundraiser event this past week and raised nearly $500 for the Hiawatha Valley Mental Health Center.

Active Minds president Gretchen Haga said the club began preparing for the event back in October when they asked for personal experience submissions from campus and Winona community. The event hosted more than 200 people with three performances of 14 monologues.

“Our main goal of this project was to promote mental health, but, even more so, we wanted to affect change on our campus and our community,” Haga said.

Haga said the event itself, inclusive of the actors, submissions and directors, was beautiful, but more importantly she was pleased with the response from the audience.

The audience commented on what pieces “they connected with and which pieces really opened up their eyes to the reality of mental illness.”

“There were even audience members that came up to me afterward and were inspired to write out their own story,” Haga said.

The club believes in bringing mental illness into conversation, so that those struggling will be encouraged to speak out instead of feeling silenced by society’s stigma against mental disorders.

Abbey Hammell, Active Minds research liaison, encourages and welcomes others to join the club if they are interested in helping to spread awareness through the campus and community.

Haga said, “We wanted to provide hope to those struggling with a mental illness, encouragement for loved ones of those who experience mental illness, and knowledge to those who may not know what millions and millions of people deal with everyday.”