The Tangerine has launched a new series on its YouTube called Minechat. The premise of the series talks to students about their significant mental health stories over a game of Minecraft. The Tangerine firmly believes that mental health has become the strongest student-driven initiative at Utica College. This series is an attempt to join those important conversations and give students a comfortable alternative to tell their stories while giving the chance for those in the community to relate to the experiences being shared.

In the first episode, we talked with two students. One of them was going through a very recent break up. She goes on to describe the effects of going through that while balancing school and being so close to graduation. The other student describes her “business-like” relationship with her parents; something she feels almost isolated about.

The second episode of Minechat talks with a student whose character in the game is a polar bear. The bear describes previous emotional scars from an early relationship and how that’s gone on to affect the current state of her relationships with others to this day. The student stresses the fact that for a while, she tried to analyze why she would be feeling sad. This led to experiences with anxiety and depression, something that landed her in the hospital. At the end of the day, the polar bear expressed the need for others going through hard times to keep going and to keep putting up a fight.

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