Mental and Behavioral Health
Inside Higher Ed reports that Harrisburg Area Community College, (HACC), the largest community college in Pennsylvania, is eliminating mental health services on campus. Higher ed experts are concerned that more struggling two-year institutions may follow suit. Many community colleges, largely underfunded and facing declining enrollment, are struggling to keep up with the high costs of providing those services. The Editorial Board of the Pitt News argued that, given the mental health crisis on campuses across the country, HACC should be increasing its resources “by any means possible.” John Sygielski, the president of HACC, attributed the elimination of mental health counseling to a larger effort to reorganize the services offered by the college. “There has been an increase in demand for virtual services and flexible services outside of regular office hours,” Sygielski said in a statement. “With the reorganization, external counseling services will augment the college’s services by providing extended hours and, in some cases, 24/7 service.” Counselors at HACC will assist students in areas other than mental health, including academic goal setting, career exploration, balancing college and other aspects of life and connecting students with food, shelter and transportation resources.
Tufts University’s Mental Health Task Force released its final report to the community after three years of work. “[The Task Force] was launched in December of 2016 … to examine the state of student mental health on campus; assess mental health services and related resources; review policies and practices; and develop actionable recommendations with respect to education, outreach, and mental health promotion; services and resources; and policies and practices,” the report stated. The report noted that while there are university-wide services available, there is not a standardized approach for addressing mental health issues. “Recognizing student mental health and well-being as a university-wide priority, the Task Force recommends further exploration of the potential to develop an Integrated Wellness Outreach Center to promote holistic student health, mindfulness, nutrition and well-being across the university,” the report says. The report’s other recommendations include exploring new evening hours for CMHS and telehealth, hiring more counselors on campus and exploring the possibility of a first-year course focused on mental well-being.
The Louisiana State University Student Health Center began a new mental health initiative this semester called “Let’s Talk” that offers 15-minute walk-in counseling sessions. The program is designed to provide students access to a mental health professional who can talk them through specific problems, give their perspective or answer questions. Dr. John Otzenberger, director of mental health at the LSU Student Health Center, said Let’s Talk is a safe space for students to talk to mental health professionals. “It’s low-key and no stress,” Otzenberger said. “If you have any concerns about a friend, you can come in to Let’s Talk because this is all confidential. You’re not even writing your name down.”
At the first session of “Difficult Dialogues,” a Kansas State University discussion series to provide faculty with training on how to handle difficult situations, Dr. Kodee Walls, a psychologist at K-State Counseling Services, gave a presentation on the mental health crisis on college campuses. “The initiative was designed primarily for faculty and staff to learn some techniques and skills for engaging and facilitating difficult dialogues when they may come up,” Bryan Samuel, chief diversity and inclusion officer, said. “I’m not sure how many students know that we are doing this, but I think it’s important for students to know that we are concerned and making every effort to leverage educational opportunities to engage and speak on these different things when they do come up.” Samuel said he hopes the series will enable faculty who regularly interact with students to gain the skills and background they need to speak confidently about “difficult dialogues.” Thursday’s presentation focused on what faculty can do in response to the rising prevalence of mental health concerns facing college students.
Dartmouth College‘s Mental Health Student Union has introduced “Late Night Solace,” the only current peer-support mental health program on campus. MHU was launched last fall to increase awareness about the importance of mental health on campus and promote accessibility to mental health services. Biological sciences professor Lee Witters serves as one of the club’s advisors. He said that in recent years he has noticed a changing atmosphere regarding mental health on campus. He noted that his students and advisees increasingly mentioned anxiety, depression and stress. Assistant director for health improvement Todd Gibbs, who also advises MHU, said that he is a big believer in peer support. “There’s a certain credibility that comes when a student can receive connection and guidance from another student,” Gibbs said. “They are well-acquainted with the overall system and the situation’s context.” He said that peer support could augment the spectrum of mental health care already available to students on campus.
VICE reports on the long waiting periods that many students face to get counseling services on campus. According to VICE, “years of public efforts towards encouraging young people to seek help for their mental health concerns has paid off-a generation of college-age kids is unprecedentedly candid about suffering from mental illness.” But the institutions aren’t always equipped to meet the historic demand. The article cites a 2017 report by Stat News that found that wait lists were present at some of the largest and most prestigious schools in the nation: the massive state universities of Michigan, Florida, and Indiana, as well as the private, prestigious Harvard, Columbia, and MIT. Small liberal arts schools like Minnesota’s Carleton College and Jesuit universities like Nebraska’s Creighton also have wait times stretching weeks. The article stresses that extended periods without help can allow students’ conditions to worsen as they wait for help, citing a 2015 study by the National Academy of Sciences that found that increased waiting times for healthcare services of any kind were linked to notedly worsened health outcomes and patient satisfaction, and the detrimental effects of waiting for mental health services are particularly worrisome. As state education budgets remain constrained, many counseling directors are trying to balance long-term counseling needs with urgent counseling needs, and, in the process, considering what the role of a counseling center itself should be. Peter LeViness, director of Counseling and Psychological Services at the University of Richmond said, “When demand exceeds capacity, you have to come up with something creative. That’s not necessarily ideal.” While the experts VICE spoke to seemed to agree that additional resources would alleviate the issue, some doubted that increasing funds or staff could completely solve it. “There’s no way to staff your way out of this challenge,” said Aaron Krasnow, associate vice president and director of counseling services at Arizona State University, “Even if you had unlimited resources, that would presume that the counseling center was the solution path for everybody’s depression or anxiety, which is not how you want to approach a human issue.”
University of Southern California‘s Undergraduate Student Government updated a statement reaffirming its commitment to campus mental health. Sen. Angela Chuang said the statement’s updates help promote concrete initiatives USG is working on to improve mental health issues on campus. “We really want to ensure that students recognize that we’re here to support them, and we’re here to work on projects that will benefit them and will hopefully support them regarding mental health,” Chuang said. Senators Emily Johnson, Chris McMorran and Benjamin Shiff are in the process of approving a task force of eight students to collaborate with Engemann Student Health Center on redesigning the mental health resources page on its website.
The University System of Georgia announced that it has created a 14-member task force to find more support and services for students struggling with anxiety, stress and mental illness.The task force of college administrators, mental health professionals, faculty and students will look at what’s working at some of its 26 colleges and universities and identify successful programs at schools across the nation to see if they can be replicated in Georgia. Additionally, the task force will explore partnerships with state and local agencies to support students. “Incidents of mental health challenges are too common on campuses across the country and in the University System,” said Chancellor Steve Wrigley in a press release announcing the task force. “Many (students) do not seek assistance for the issues they’re facing”, he said during a state Board of Regents meeting at the University of Georgia. Two Georgia Tech students died from apparent suicides late last year.
State University of New York Chancellor Kristina M. Johnson has announced the formation of the SUNY Student Mental Health and Wellness Task Force. The group will offer recommendations on how the system can make a measurable difference in addressing the mental health needs of students and mitigating the negative effects of behavioral health risks, including suicide. “We are witnessing an unprecedented surge in mental health issues among young adults in particular, including anxiety, depression, and suicide,” said Johnson. “Not only will we expand our resources and safety nets across SUNY, we will also strengthen our early interventions to better ensure we reach our students in need and get them to sources of help.” The task force will focus on early interventions and explore existing practices and public health approaches across the nation to address the mental health needs of SUNY students. The task force will also investigate, develop, and recommend strategies for scaling evidence-based and innovative models for student support across all 64 SUNY campuses.
In an op-ed in NYU news, Diya Jain, argues that NYU should allow students to take days off for their mental health. The suggestion follows legislation, recently introduced into the New York State Senate, that would allow public school students to take days off for their mental health. According to Jain, NYU’s current policy for excused absences is largely in the hands of professors. Most classes allow a certain number of days off, provided the student is able to produce medical notes as proof. Students can also seek religious exemptions. Jain says that, if NYU adopted a similar policy to New York state’s proposed legislation, it would allow students to take a day or two off without requiring a medical note that claims they suffered from a panic attack or anxiety, for example.
A new online self-help guide is intended to provide Utah State University students with another option for mental health care. The program, called the ACT Guide, is based upon a form of treatment called acceptance and commitment therapy, or ACT. The guide was developed by the Utah State University ACT Research Group. To Michael Levin, the co-director of the research group, ACT means “learning how to open up to difficult thoughts and feelings in a self-compassionate way and how to identify what really matters to you.” According to Levin, “It teaches a set of core psychological skills we find helpful for improving quality of life and addressing a wide range of different mental health issues.”
The Philadelphia Inquirer reports that some universities are introducing meditation and mindfulness apps to help students cope with increased stress. Universities that offer their students free subscriptions to paid meditation apps include Johns Hopkins and Carnegie Mellon. Boston University offers a subscription to faculty and staff. “From what I know, ‘wind-downs’ is one of the top ways students are using the app,” said Angie Lusk, program director of student affairs wellness initiatives at Carnegie Mellon. She said that since rolling out an institutional membership to Headspace last spring, students and staff have meditated for a total of more than 720,000 minutes. “People are also using Headspace before they walk into an exam or start their homework to find their focus a little bit better.”
In a Letter to the Editor of MIT’s newspaper, The Tech, Blanche Staton, Senior Associate Dean for Graduate Education, Director of the Office of Graduate Education, and Ian A. Waitz, Vice Chancellor for Undergraduate and Graduate Education, responded to a recent article on graduate student mental health. The original piece, “Graduate student mental health is in crisis,” advocated for creating “a healthier academic environment for [all graduate students] to grow as scholars and people.” Staton and Waitz wrote, “We too are committed to that end and applaud the authors for elevating this crucial matter and providing an opportunity to foster conversation – and, most importantly, action. We will be meeting some of the authors soon to discuss how we can best collaborate. Our colleagues from MIT Medical have already begun working with the authors to better understand the issues that the piece raised about mental health, so we will focus our comments on improving the advisor-advisee relations and enhancing local-level climate.”
David Shor, director of clinical services at Northwestern University’s Counseling and Psychological Services, led the Faculty Senate in a training program for suicide prevention called: Question, Persuade, and Refer Training. Shor told faculty that Northwestern’s CAPS has seen a 50 percent increase in the utilization of its services over the past ten years. Faculty Senate President Lois Hedman said that while she hopes as many faculty members as possible receive QPR training, she said the members present at the training can at least return to their departments more informed. “We thought this was one way for us to not only put a focus on this at the beginning of the academic year,” Hedman said. “But at the same time, also train many of us who are all from different departments.”
AXIOS reports on new CDC data that shows that the number of suicides among people ages 10 to 24 increased 56% from 2007 to 2017, the fastest rate of any age group. The report shows that suicides are disproportionately affecting people of color and those in the LGBTQ community.