Quest Day addresses mental health

The annual Quest Day got off to a great start in Oswego with some very important talks for the community about mental health.

On Wednesday, SUNY Oswego hosted its annual symposium dedicated to sharing the scholarly and creative pursuits of students, faculty and staff. One of the first events was a series of two talks on psychology, each with a focus on areas related to mental health.

The first talk was given by Gretchen Dowd, a psychology student who spoke about human trafficking becoming a rising global issue in recent years. More efforts have been put forward toward prosecuting traffickers, but there remains little support for the survivors of human trafficking. Studies have shown that applying epigenetics to the mental health treatment of survivors can increase treatment success among this population.

“It’s super important to talk about it. Human trafficking has this stigma around it, and a lot of survivors are afraid to come forward because they don’t want to be perceived… especially sex trafficking data shows they don’t want to be associated with that, being way more afraid to come forward. Opening up the conversation to show it wasn’t their fault is important,” Dowd said.

During her talk, Dowd presented numerous statistics to support and highlight the importance of this topic. One of them was that, according to the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, 202,478 victims were detected between 2020 and 2023.

Dowd also broke down many risk factors for people who are trafficked: environment, social media, psychological factors and LGBTQ+ identity. Data shows 40% of homeless youth are LGBTQ+.
After preparing her argument by showing all these numbers, Dowd explained how the impact of epigenetics can alter the final results. Epigenetics is the study of how trauma can cause differences in gene activity, not by changing DNA but by affecting how genes are turned on or off.

The idea of helping victims is that increased funding for research can lead to a better understanding of the epidemiology of the victims, along with clear regulations, ethical guidelines and broader applications. Dowd recommends that the approach to those victims should be focused on the environment, integrated and individualized care, and training more clinics in epigenetics.

The research process was very intense. “This was my undergraduate honors thesis, so I started in junior year… I started collecting the papers and analyzing at the end of the summer,” Dowd said.
By the end of the talk, Dowd got emotional and thanked Paul Stewart, associate professor, for the help he provided during the research.

“It’s fantastic. It’s really important because all the things they have learned, they are able to demonstrate here,” Stewart said, discussing the importance of seeing students deliver these talks. “Having a student who had multiple mentors in our department and do presentations like that is very powerful.”
The second talk was a study that examined how LGBTQ+ college students’ perceptions of parental overprotection are associated with mental health outcomes and optimism. Data from the research indicates that increases in overprotection relate to increases in depression, as well as decreases in students’ positivity about the future, identity acceptance and self-esteem.

This talk was based on research conducted by Cassandra VanDamme, which is still ongoing. The survey had 51 participants from SUNY Oswego, where they were asked questions about their relationships and whether their parents are considered a secure base or are more overprotective.

Studies before showed that overprotective parents often cause some mental outcomes with LGBTQ+ students in the future, like not accepting themselves or feeling lost. The survey conducted by VanDamme showed the same results: overprotective parents can cause lower self-acceptance, self-esteem and greater depression.

“This project has been going on for two years, from starting to collecting data until now,” VanDamme said. “It’s been so great. I am part of the LGBTQ+ community, and this is a very important topic.”
Both speakers opened up about various topics during the process, even though they had been studying them for a long time. Throughout the process, many new things appeared.

“I didn’t know that just perceiving your parent as overprotective is associated with seeing yourself as not being appreciated in the future,” VanDamme said about one of the things she learned from this survey.