Mental Health NOW Project
The Mental Health NOW project is creating an accessible outdoor space where the Cal State Monterey Bay community can connect with nature, support well-being and strengthen a sense of belonging.
For the last few years, there has been growing support for creating accessible outdoor spaces that foster the well-being of our campus community through engagement with the natural environment.
The Mental Health NOW Project’s mission is to connect the community to nature by creating spaces that foster mental health and well-being and a sense of belonging for all people while enhancing existing native plants and ecosystems.
The approved 2022 Master Plan supports a natural open space project intended to connect the campus community with the natural Monterey Bay environment, enhance the sense of place and bring learning opportunities into nature.
In spring 2019, Cal State Monterey Bay professor Jennifer Lovell’s Ways to Improve Student Health and Wellness via Outdoor Spaces study found that:
“When asked how outdoor spaces could be therapeutic, five prominent themes emerged from the student and employee campus participants, including reduced stress, relaxation, connectedness to nature, places for socialization and seating, and mindfulness.”
The project concept was initially proposed by Allen McClellan, a Health and Wellness Services staff member, who anecdotally saw the effectiveness of time spent in open spaces in reducing the effects of post-traumatic stress disorder in troops returning from combat. As the suicide prevention specialist, Allen believed the same approach could reduce stress and improve students’ mental health and shared with the Planning Department examples of open spaces throughout the world that could be created at Cal State Monterey Bay.
With this idea, a couple of areas of the Cal State Monterey Bay campus are ideal locations for the Mental Health NOW Project, which intends to use ideas and research generated by the campus community. Since 2020, Health and Wellness Services and Campus Planning have been working together to gain broader campus support for developing the project. Presentations were made to Associated Students and the Academic Senate, which passed a Community Park Resolution in spring 2020.