Mental and Behavioral Health
“Psychology and the Good Life,” a Yale University course where students learn the psychology of living a joyful, meaningful life is the most popular course ever offered at the school with more than 1,200 students taking the class. The professor, Laurie Santos, challenges students to use that knowledge to change their own lives, to apply the lessons of gratitude, helping others, getting enough sleep. As part of this, students tried to rewire themselves – to exercise more, to thank their mothers, to care less about grades and more about ideas.
After Hamilton College student Graham Burton died by suicide in his dorm room in December in 2016, his mother Gina Burton learned that the college was aware of the extreme difficulties he had been facing prior to his suicide. Professors had exchanged emails about his absences, and he was failing almost every class. His advisor wrote to a colleague, “Obviously what’s happening here is a complete crash and burn. I don’t know what the procedures/rules are for contacting parents but if this was my kid, I’d want to know.” The parents were not informed however. Hamilton cites the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act, FERPA, a law that colleges say protects the privacy and autonomy of students who are learning to be adults. The Burton family has undertaken a campaign to strip away the veils of confidentiality that they believe contributed to their son’s death.
According to Psychology Today, advances in pharmacology have made it increasingly possible for young people with a range of mental health issues to attend college. However, the lack of supervision, coupled with academic pressures and easy access to alcohol and drugs can present challenges even for students who’ve demonstrated a strong ability to function and succeed. Carolyn Reinach Wolf, who writes the column “From the Desk of the Mental Health Lawyer”, suggests that parents have a good understanding of the dangers and the guardrails they can enact to mitigate risks.
A Harvard University mental health survey conducted by Health Services in partnership with the Undergraduate Council was created to paint a picture of the emotional well-being of the student body and their awareness of support mechanisms in place to address mental health concerns. Results showed: a lack of awareness of student resources; and the fact that more than one in seven surveyed reported their emotional health has had a negative effect on their academic performance. Asked about the state of their overall emotional health, roughly 78 percent of respondents reported it to be either “good,” “very good,” or “excellent,” while about 22 percent reported their overall emotional health as “poor” or “fair.”
In their May meetings, the University of Minnesota’s Board of Regents discussed, among other topics, the implementation of new mental health training programs on all campuses. This resulted from system-wide reports on student health and wellness in 2015 and 2016 that found mental health issues negatively impact many students’ daily activities and academic success. At the meeting, Sandra Olson-Loy, vice chancellor for student affairs for the Morris campus said “Mental health is the number one public health issue on the University of Minnesota campuses” Learn to Live, an online tool providing mental health screening and other therapy modules, was expanded to all five campuses last fall.
The increase in student demand for mental health resources at Dartmouth College has led “The Call to Lead”, a campaign to allocate $17 million towards supporting student mental health resources on campus. According to the Director of the College’s health service Mark Reed, the funding is intended to serve three main focus areas for students’ mental health: improving timely accessibility to mental health services, providing ongoing support to help students and offering education and prevention programs.
A group of six business students at the College of Idaho started Green Mind, a social entrepreneurial model selling potted spider plants to fellow students alongside mental health and self-care practices. Green Mind is meant to bring greater attention to these issues and to demystify the stigmas and the struggles associated with mental illness. The student-run organization earned $13,000 in seed funding at the 2018 Idaho Entrepreneur Challenge last March.
Scholars Promoting and Revitalizing Care, a student group at the University of Maryland, is gifting money to the Department of Resident Life to implement a training program for responding to mental health issues. After winning $5,000 last week at the university’s Do Good Challenge finals, the group plans to put $2,500 toward establishing a Mental Health First Aid certification program. The Mental Health First Aid program consists of an 8-hour course teaching participants how to identify, understand and respond to signs of mental illnesses and substance use disorders.
University of California Los Angeles Counseling and Psychological Services (CAPS) has created new programs to interact with and support students using funds from increased student fees. CAPS is using funding from the #UCLAwellness Initiative Referendum to operate the CAPS Student Advisory Board, to run the International Student Support Program and to hire a community liaison who will help students access mental health resources outside CAPS. The #UCLAwellness Initiative Referendum, which student voters passed in the 2016 undergraduate student government election, increased student fees by $6 per quarter. Of that, $1.50 goes to CAPS, and the office has so far accumulated around $200,000 from the referendum.
Educational leaders and students gathered together during a recent Harvard University ‘Let’s Talk!’ conference to discuss how campus mental health services still do not meet the needs of all students, highlighting that in particular Asian and Asian American students are often left out of important student health discussions. According to Education Dive, the challenge for many colleges is not just the ability to identify increased vulnerability for minority students, but the understanding of how vulnerabilities add to the negative experiences minority students are already likely to face on campus.
In the wake of the forcible arrest of a black undergraduate last month, one student group, Black Students Organizing for Change, pressed for the “expedited hiring” of Counseling and Mental Health Service counselors who identify as people of color. However, Chief of CAMHS Barbara Lewis said the agency’s budget currently makes hiring more counselors infeasible.