Stigma Free Speaker Series

The  Psychology & Human Services club, along with Student Life & Activities, is hosting a Stigma Free Speaker Series. All events are held in MAS 100 and will be available live on Zoom (registration is required). The presenters are Brookdale Community College alumni, students and mental health professionals!

Please join the Psychology and Human Services Club as they go past the surface and have a “Real Talk” about the challenges of Stigma.

WARNING: Mental Health Disclaimer: Please be advised that content of the presentations may at times be difficult for audience members due to the nature of the topics. Our goal is to discuss different topics such as trauma, self-harm, anxiety, and depression in a space that allows for awareness, enhances understanding and empathy, and ultimately chips away at stigma. Mental health resources will be made available for each presentation and mental health professionals will be in attendance to assist those with resources.

Spring 2024 Presenters

George Reklaitis

February 29th
11:45 a.m. – 1:15 p.m.
MAS 100 and on Zoom
Lunch will be served

George Reklaitis is a Professor of History, and has taught at Brookdale since 2004. He received his Ph.D. in World History from Northeastern University and teaches courses in World History, American History, the History of World War II, and the History of Modern Russia. He has authored several publications on the Cold War, World War II, the Holocaust and the Soviet Union. He is a frequent presenter at events at Brookdale, Monmouth County and academic conferences around the country. When he’s not teaching history to Brookdale students, or giving talks about the war in the Ukraine, he coaches his twin sons’ baseball and basketball teams and is preparing to send his eldest, Blaire, off to college next year.

Teaching College history is the fulfillment of a lifelong passion, and being in front of a classroom of students or in front of an audience, is George’s happy place. He loves teaching history and the overwhelmingly positive feedback from his students is confirmation that he is good at his craft. However, George has spent his entire life dealing with crippling anxiety and depression. While he grew up in a loving and supportive family environment, he did not come forward with episodes of abuse that occurred outside the family. Alcohol abuse became the principal means of coping. Keeping up a pleasant, welcoming, and humorous outward appearance among students, colleagues, and family, George dealt with his emotional and psychological struggles in secret. There is a happy ending to this story, but the path was both difficult and challenging for George and his family.

Link to REGISTER for Zoom presentation

Donna Pope

March 28th
11:45 a.m. – 1:15 p.m.
MAS 100 and on Zoom
Lunch will be served

Donna Pope is a writer, Professor of English at Brookdale, and someone who thrives on connection and being honest about what we are often afraid to talk about. She cherishes the community, sanity, and sense of purpose she’s found in her many years at Brookdale.

Donna identifies as a support-group queen, someone in long-term recovery from addiction, member of the LGBTQ community, neurodivergent, and a divorced, single mom. In the last decade, she adopted her oldest child through the NJ foster care system, lost both parents to lung cancer, survived a marriage broken down by mental illness and family dysfunction, and weathered many parenting fails and successes raising three needy, amazing kids.

In this talk, Donna will share a variety of resources that have supported her and her family through so many challenges and discuss some psychological approaches and meditative practices that have been transformational. She likes being in the moment and improvising, so come prepared for stumbling and imperfection, vulnerability, laughter born from identification, definitely some music, and maybe some storytelling, poetry, art, meditation, and whatever else all of you bring into the space.

Link to REGISTER for Zoom presentation

Lisa Morris

April 18th
11:45 a.m. – 1:15 p.m.
MAS 100 and on Zoom
Lunch will be served

Lisa is a graduate of Brookdale Community College and Monmouth University. Lisa has studied abroad at the Sorbonne (University of Paris) where she earned her Certificate of Language and Culture as well as Kings College in Wales where she studied English literature. At Brookdale, she currently works as an academic tutor of English as a Second Language and French in addition to working as an adjunct instructor of ESL. She has worked at Brookdale since 1997.

She has led a mostly happy life and has enjoyed helping people throughout her career and in her personal life. She had many friends and was very involved in her family life. All that changed in November of 2022 when Lisa lost her youngest daughter to alcohol addiction, changing her life and her family’s lives forever. Losing a child to addiction and mental illness led to feelings of shame, anger, and confusion—the confusion that distances the griever from their social groups. Having lost her daughter to alcoholism showed her that our culture is not ready to deal with losing a child, especially to addiction.

In this talk, Lisa will share suggestions, stemming from her painful experience, on how to approach someone who is grieving an unimaginable loss while shouldering the burden of stigmatized grief and ways to handle it, both as the ones who grieves and those who seek to help but are at a loss for ways to do so.

Link to REGISTER for Zoom presentation

The Stigma-Free Lecture Series is sponsored by Student Life & Activities.