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Acknowledge, Support, Keep-in-Touch (A.S.K.) with Active Minds

In 2023, Active Minds, the nation’s leading nonprofit for young adult mental health, established an advisory council composed of BIPOC and LGBTQ+ college students. This board was created to help research, develop, and advise on the creation of mental health resources tailored to their communities and to be distributed nationally. The students transformed Active Minds' V-A-R training into a new tool called A.S.K., which stands for Acknowledge, Support, Touch. This presentation will explore the unique mental health needs of students from BIPOC and LGBTQ+ communities, share practical insights from these young adults, and showcase A.S.K. along with the new digital experience designed to make students proficient in these three steps. This new tool can be used to help train peer health educators in inclusive, peer to peer support conversations and be used by peer educators to change the campus climate and culture around student mental health.

Learning Outcomes:

  • Understand the mental health disparities that exist for LGBTQ+ and BIPOC college students and their mental health needs.
  • Articulate the three steps of A.S.K. and the components comprising each step.
  • Create ways to use A.S.K. in your peer health education program at your college specific to the needs of your own campus.

Markie Pasternak

Senior Manager of Higher Education

Active Minds Inc.

Markie oversees Active Minds’ work in higher education, focusing on mental health support for college and university students, staff, and faculty. She focuses on making Active Minds' programs inclusive of different institution types and student populations. Markie received her bachelor’s in psychology from Marquette University and her Master’s of Science in Higher Education and Student Affairs from Indiana University-Bloomington. Before joining the Active Minds Staff, Markie worked at Auburn University focusing on mental health programming and peer health education for their Division of Student Affairs, and was the co-advisor for the campus’s Active Minds chapter. 

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