School of the Art Institute students to show how art combats loneliness on 'Today' show

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Beginning college can be a difficult experience. It’s the first time many teenagers are living on their own. Some are nervous about making new friends and adjusting to new spaces.

Nearly one in five university students report experiencing anxiety or depression. To help students, at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, mental health professionals are zeroing in on a word they say people are using more — loneliness.

The school’s Wellness Center, on the 13th floor at 116 S. Michigan Ave., provides students access to medical, mental health, disability, learning and health education professionals. It also encourages artwork as a type of therapy.

Students from the Wellness Center are scheduled to be on the “Today” show Tuesday. The segment will focus on the loneliness epidemic.

An exhibit called “With / in” focuses on compassion and loneliness. One interactive piece uses a plastic pillow that inflates to help steady breathing; another student experimented with wearing a boot with a plant growing inside it, weighing what compassion one can show an object.

For the “Today” segment, said Wellness Center Executive Director Joseph Behen, students were asked to think of someone they wanted to support and create art for that person.

“Magic then happened,” said Behen, who has been at the school, which received a $300,000 grant from the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration, for two decades. “It was playful and joyful, and that just speaks to the power of the arts to connect people, to bring them together.”

The center discovered, through helping students who feel anxious or depressed, that they often experienced a lack of belonging. And belonging, Behen notes, correlates with loneliness.

“We’re more inclined to talk about things like belonging, or connection,” he said. “We’re in a moment I think right now where people are feeling like they can talk more about loneliness.”

He pointed to Cornell University student Emery Bergmann’s video that went viral detailing her struggle with making friends and adjusting to college.

In Chicago, students embraced chances to better understand mental health and administer aid. Behen said that when the school sent out an email offering Mental Health First Aid, a course that teaches risk factors and warning signs, and offers resources, 80 students signed up the first day.

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