DMAX club combats mental health stigma on campus

Though we are creative, ambitious and driven, our generations’ biggest limitation is our propensity to privatize our emotions.

We find it more natural and common to share our bodies, minds and passions on platforms for the world to see, but find it difficult to share even with our loved ones when we feel lost, in pain or alone.

In 2013, Dan “DMAX” Maxwell took his own life at 18 years old. Dan had struggled with psychological and emotional pain for over a year with little relief from medication and therapy.

Dan and his parents, Laurie and Lee Maxwell, felt it was too difficult to confide in friends and family about what he was going through. Dan suffered in silence until he could no longer bear the weight of his anxiety and depression.

After Dan’s passing, the Maxwells vowed to help young people like their son who are also suffering in silence. The DMAX Foundation was founded to eliminate stigma and encourage safe and caring conversations about psychological and emotional issues among young adults.

In the past two years, the DMAX Foundation has started DMAX clubs, student-run safe spaces for open conversation about mental health, on five college campuses: Elon University, University of Maryland, Temple University, Penn State and Drexel University. Currently, the DMAX Foundation is starting a club at St. Joe’s.

As an intern for the DMAX Foundation, I have the privilege of working alongside Laurie and Lee as they strive to build safe spaces on different campuses—all while running a nonprofit out of their home.

Every Tuesday and Thursday morning when other St. Joe’s interns and I walk in, we take our seats at the kitchen table and are greeted by a familiar sight; the walls are decorated with photos of Dan, DMAX Foundation flyers and club posters scattered on the floor. I am reminded of the fragility of life and of the ease with which we may succumb to our most insidious emotions.

Often while working quietly on a project, beside other interns with headphones in their ears and their eyes scanning laptop screens, I’ll let my sight wander away from the task I’m working on to a picture frame with Dan’s school photos—one for each grade.

Spending a few seconds on each picture, like a youthful flipbook full of missing teeth and varied haircuts, I feel as if I know him, a sense of familiarity and warmth extended from a home in which I am a stranger.

During one of my first weeks working with the Maxwells, Lee showed me a quiet room in their house they had dedicated to Dan.

Tucked in the corner is a baby grand piano ornamented with photos, poster boards and cards. Lee kept his eyes on a specific photo of Dan outfitted in his high school uniform holding a lacrosse stick over his shoulder, stoic and assured. He spoke highly of his son, praising his agility, athleticism and intelligence.

He suddenly broke from his praise and said to me, “You know some days are harder than others. Some days, I just come in here and cry.”

Together in that room, in front of the many memories of Dan, I fully understood the mission of the DMAX Foundation. I realized what the Maxwells wanted was to spare others. I saw their exceptional strength and grace, building from the ground up a foundation in memory of their son. 

One of the things the Maxwells emphasize when they initiate DMAX clubs on college campuses is that Dan felt he had no one with whom he could share his inner battles.

The goal of the club is not to replace CAPS or therapy with a professional, but instead to create a safe environment for peers to be open about their emotions and their struggles. Depression or anxiety seem pervasive and alternatives to suicide are unknown or distant, students need to know that they are not alone in their battles.

Though it is still in preliminary stages of approval and installation, David Hudak ’21 has already been named president and the DMAX club was at this year’s Activities Fair. 

This added support system for students could not come at a better time.

With such a comprehensive and inclusive approach to a public health crisis, students  can discover that they, as Hemingway put it, “are strong at the broken places” and that they do not have to manage their pain in seclusion.