A Place To Talk

One of our main missions is to assist the Hopkins community in meeting the recommendations of the Mental Health Task Force recommendations. As listed in sections 1.d and 3c, students need more access to information about the mental health services on campus. Therefore, we focus to increase campus awareness on the presence of APTT and highlight the impact of mental health on academic performance and overall well-being of students. We plan on accomplishing this through an extensive use of advertising campaigns and public relations events. We also hope to improve group cohesion through increased amounts of bonding events.

A Place to Talk (APTT) is the student-to-student peer listening group for the Hopkins community. APTT was founded in 1983 to provide support and excellence in peer listening to the Johns Hopkins community in an empathetic, reliable, and responsible manner. We seek to train members and non-members to be effective peer listeners in order to offer an environment on the JHU campus for anyone to discuss anything, from everyday frustrations to serious concerns. Our programming is centered around recruiting and training new members, staffing our rooms, maintaining group cohesion and communication, increasing the awareness of APTT services around campus, and training other student organizations in attentive listening skills. As of right now, our club’s plan for functioning during the 2024-2025 school year is to maintain and operate two peer-listening rooms, one in Brody Learning Commons (BLC) 4010 and one in Wolman Hall.

The APTT rooms are staffed from 7:00pm-1:00am Sunday through Friday, amounting to 60 hours a week for 13 weeks each semester. The rooms are stocked with candy, games, blankets, tissues, and other materials to make visitors feel welcome and comfortable. Keeping the APTT rooms in the best shape possible is integral to the success of our group. In 2023 alone, we had 1051 visits to our rooms, and in the 2023-2024 school year, we had over 1000+ interactions via social media and mental health events. In the 2024-2025 academic year, we hope to reach additional students as well as contribute to a campus environment that is supportive of student mental health.