“It's normal to admit you're not okay”: New York City college students shaping mental health through journaling

Emerging data make clear that, while there are common pandemic experiences related to mental health across different populations, access to those shared experiences is often disproportionate. In the context of exploring expansive definitions of health as part of their Introduction to Urban Community Health course, students at a large, public university in New York City were given the opportunity to engage with the Pandemic Journaling Project (PJP) beginning in June 2020. This paper explores the impact of both creating their own journals, and reading and reflecting on the public entries of others, on student mental health, and on students' abilities to discuss and process their health status, holistically defined. It raises questions of how definitions of “normal” in relation to feelings of diminished mental health are shared and reified in the context of the pandemic, asking if the process of journaling might be a way not just to capture mental health histories of the pandemic, but also to create an inclusive, therapeutic space for a conversation around mental health.