5/29 – 6/4

Mental and Behavioral Health

NPR spoke with Dr. Anthony Rostain, professor of psychiatry and pediatrics at the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania, and co-author of The Stressed Years of Their Lives about why current college students are more stressed than previous generations, how high tuition is contributing to stress, why some students have trouble adjusting to college and how parents can help their college-age children deal with anxiety. Rostain noted, “What we’re seeing now are growing numbers of students coming [onto] campus who are already being treated for mental illness, or who are on various medications and who really have learned to manage their illnesses at home,” he says, “but suddenly they’re on their own and sometimes they’re not following through [with] their own recommended treatments.”

In Thrive Global, Jessica Hicks, a senior at Lehigh University, wrote an open letter to other first-generation college students on how to handle stress, emphasizing that students should learn to promote their passions and well-being while giving back to others. Her advice? Seek out mentors who lead by example, keep an open mind, and use the experiences and newfound knowledge obtained at college to help others.

In a new report, the University of North Carolina’s Mental Health Task Force published nearly 60 recommendations organized around three broad themes: wellness and climate; identification, treatment and ongoing support; and academic policies. The recommendations include creating a permanent committee on mental health to continuously assess the overall mental health needs of students, faculty and staff;  creating a central health and well-being online resource; promoting wellness and academic coaching programs through student wellness; exploring opportunities to support transportation to and from off-campus treatment; using technology to fill identified gaps in mental health services; and exploring options for peer support programs.

In an audio series at Northwestern University, “Defining Safe,” Connor Pera, a Kellogg student, shares his story about resources he’s found at Northwestern. Pera, who struggles with depression and anxiety and is in recovery from addiction, said one of his first priorities when he came to Northwestern was finding a 12-step program for addiction recovery in the area.

In Thrive Global, Sara Gorman, Director of High School Programming for The Jed Foundation, questions the obsession with getting into an elite university. She asks, “What does it tell us about the undue pressure we are putting on our teens and young adults, and what might it be doing to their mental health?” Gorman writes that young people should choose a college that’s a “good fit”, not only based on prestige or academics. According to Gorman, a “good fit” school is one in which the student feels comfortable and engaged. She advocates for balancing prestige or selectivity of the school with other factors, such as school character and available support services.

The developers of the Healthy Minds Network at the University of Michigan unveiled Sage, a mobile health platform designed to give college students an on-demand link to mental health education and resources. The digital health platform is designed to provide online education and support to students identified through the Healthy Minds Network as needing those resources.

In an Inside Higher Ed op-ed, Gary Glass, the director of counseling and career services at Oxford College of Emory University, argues that if colleges put a greater emphasis on community and connection rather than on “mental health,” they may find that they already have the needed resources on college campuses to address the challenges students face. Glass asks, “In framing all of these challenges in terms of mental health issues, are we reducing the role that other campus professionals — not to mention fellow students — can play in our students’ healing and growth?

Diverse Education reports that student mental health issues, globally, are fueling a rise in suicides and diminished well-being that affect academic performance and quality of life. And while many schools are responding with increased services aimed at prevention, experts say that more needs to be done. Dr. Birgit Schreiber, vice president of the International Association of Student Affairs and Services (IASAS), a nonprofit student-advocacy organization that spans more than 180 countries, recommended that all schools institutionalize student health management across campus constituencies; establish structured reporting of health and wellness issues and accountability measures; regularly survey students about their health; and develop participatory approaches for preventive and health-promoting measures relative to issues such as mobility, nutrition and mental health, with a focus on students with chronic diseases.

In an op-ed in the Daily Bruin, Mariah Furtek argues for a data-driven, University of California-wide initiative to better understand the driving force behind the campus mental health crisis. This program would dedicate funding for in-house researchers at each campus counseling center and prove more efficient and effective than campus-level initiatives. “We have to work with the university on what is causing stress, what is causing anxiety and address it on a more systemic basis and help our students as a whole to develop the coping skills they need to be successful,”said Gary Dunn, the director of Counseling & Psychological Services at UC Santa Cruz. According to Furtek, there is ample data already being collected including the electronic medical records of students across the system. From these records, data can be collected anonymously and aggregately to determine campus-specific and systemwide mental health trends. And campus counseling centers also fill out an assessment following each appointment describing the level of a student’s mental health issues. Individual campuses are also taking initiative to better understand student mental health concerns. UCLA, for example, is undertaking a Depression Grand Challenge aimed at cutting depression in half by 2050. And UC Berkeley is researching the causes underlying anxiety. But, Furtek writes, these projects need to take place within a systemwide framework to ensure campus resources and staff aren’t diverted from critical mental health care.

At a session focused on international student mental health at the annual NAFSA: Association of International Educators conference, panelists discussed the reasons that international students are less likely than domestic students to seek mental health treatment. Justin Chen, the co-founder of Massachusetts General Hospital’s Center for Cross-Cultural Student Emotional Wellness and an assistant professor of psychiatry at Harvard University, described a number of barriers for treatment for Chinese students specifically, including the belief that depression and anxiety are personal weaknesses rather than illnesses, a cultural tendency toward emotional inhibition rather than expression, a low awareness of services, and language/cultural barriers. “I think there’s a real lack of linguistic diversity in many university counseling systems,” Chen said. Chen also cited as a barrier the stigmatization of mental illness in many Asian cultures, including China’s, and what he described as the “insidious” role of the model-minority myth and the pressures it puts on students to live up to expectations that Asians are a model group who uniformly perform well in America. Xuhua Qin, a psychologist and multicultural specialist in counseling and mental health services at Tufts University, explained how advisers for international student can help.  Qin suggested that when referring students to counseling, international student advisers emphasize that seeking counseling is a sign of strength, explain confidentiality (that a visit to the counseling center will not appear on a student’s university record or transcript, and that it won’t impact their visa status), and discuss with students how counselors are trained to be open and culturally competent.

Diversity and Inclusion

The Chronicle of Higher Education spoke with Sarah Todd, vice president at Griffith University in Australia, and president of the Asia-Pacific Association for International Education, about xenophobia and its effects on international higher education. According to Todd, there must be a shift from a characterization of visiting students as “those people” who “are coming to take our jobs” to “those students who are coming to spend some time at our institutions.”

A report released by Nafsa: Association of International Educators warns that “harmful policies and anti-immigrant rhetoric” are keeping international students from enrolling at American colleges and, by extension, hurting the economy. According to the report, “Prospective international students and their families are concerned about U.S. federal policies and rhetoric on immigration, along with apprehensions of personal safety and tense race relations.” Survey data cited by Nafsa show that the top reason colleges have cited for declining international-student enrollment is the visa-application process, including delays and denials. Eighty-three percent of institutions reported it was a deterrent, a 49-percentage-point increase from 2016, when 34 percent of colleges reported such problems. Among the steepest increases from 2016 to 2018 were the “social and political environment” in the United States and the preference to enroll in colleges in other countries or in the student’s home country. Forty-four percent of colleges reported that students had been deterred by worries about “physical safety in the United States,” including gun violence and civil unrest, an increase of 32 percentage points.

Last week, the University of Virginia announced it would reinstate early decision within its admissions process. In 2006, the University removed early decision as an admissions option for prospective students in the interest of diversity, citing evidence that early decision is more commonly used by wealthier, more advantaged students, with fewer low-income students applying through it. Greg Roberts, dean of admission, said the university is mindful that early decision is popular among affluent families, but denied that the restoration of early decision would unbalance the admissions playing field. “If we felt that adding early decision would jeopardize the gains we’ve made in diversity, there is no way we would have done this,” he said. A 2016 analysis by the Jack Kent Cooke Foundation found that high-achieving, low-income students are half as likely as are their wealthy peers to apply early, even though it would increase their likelihood of admission.

Sexual Assault and Title IX

In two recent lawsuits, against Florida A&M University and Dartmouth College, the schools are demanding that the students who filed sexual assault complaints to publicly reveal their identities, going against long standing legal practice intended to protect plaintiffs in sensitive disputes. Experts on sexual assault cases say that these demands amount to a newly aggressive stance by universities that face potentially damaging lawsuits, and that they run counter to the spirit of federal civil rights policies. The identities of the women in both cases are known to the university lawyers, but not to the public.

Sexual Health and Reproductive Rights

Harvard Right to Life – a pro-life student organization at the College – ran a campaign this spring calling for students to request a refund for a small portion of Harvard University Health Services’ student insurance plan that goes toward funding abortions. The Student Health Insurance Plan fully covers the cost of abortions for enrolled female students. HUHS will refund the portion of the insurance that covers abortions, which amounts to approximately $1, to any student covered by the plan who requests it, according to HUHS .”Students enrolled in SHIP may request a refund for a portion of the insurance premium that covers termination of pregnancy benefits, coming out to approximately one dollar,” spokesperson Michael Perry wrote in an emailed statement.

Physical Health

“Exercise is Medicine,” a global health initiative managed by the American College of Sports Medicine, recognized Duke University for its efforts to create a culture of wellness on campus through physical activity. Duke was awarded a silver designation for engaging with staff, faculty and students in education initiatives and making movement part of daily campus life. Recognized programs include Healthy Duke’s wellness portal, My Health, Walk with a Doc, a one-mile walk with healthcare providers open to Duke and Durham community members, and a proposed one-mile walking trail on campus.

Maryland Governor Larry Hogan called on the University System of Maryland Board of Regents to investigate the handling of an adenovirus outbreak last fall on the flagship College Park campus. The virus killed 18-year-old freshman Olivia Shea Paregol and sickened more than 40 other students. Hogan, in a sharply worded letter sent last week to the university system’s governing board, said the circumstances surrounding the student death should be investigated immediately with specific attention paid to decision-making by university officials who waited 18 days to tell students about the presence of the virus. Officials from the University System Board of Regents say they have started the investigative process. The chair, Linda Gooden, read a statement to members convened on the phone that said there was a need for a thorough review of the circumstances of Olivia Paregol’s death “given the many questions that continue to be raised.”

College Affordability

In the wake of Billionaire Robert Smith’s promise to cover the student loans of the Morehouse College’s graduating class, the Wall Street Journal spoke with Morehouse graduates of previous years for their reaction. Je’lon Alexander, a 2018 graduate, said that while Mr. Smith’s gift to the class of 2019 is something that should be celebrated, it is not the solution. “These grads won’t have to worry or deal with the frustration of paying back student loans,” said Mr. Alexander, 22. “But we need to have a bigger conversation about how we can end the student-loan debt crisis in America.” Students at HBCUs have disproportionately higher loan debt than students at other schools. HBCU alumni have a median federal loan debt of about $29,000 by the time they graduate, an amount that is 32% greater than the debt of graduates of other public and nonprofit four-year schools, according to the analysis. HBCU graduates in particular are dealing with more loans because the schools, while academically competitive, don’t have the large endowments that many elite private institutions have.

Free Speech

As the Chronicle reports, public colleges and universities often open up their facilities for events hosted by outside groups but many colleges are now rethinking those policies as alt-right and white nationalist provocateurs descend on their campuses. Some public universities are able to fend off divisive speakers by arguing that their appearance would pose a safety hazard. Other schools are now requiring speakers secure the support  of an affiliated student group. In 2017, following the violent Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville, the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill joined at least three other major public universities in denying a request by white nationalist Richard Spencer to speak on its campus. Evergreen State College revised its guidelines for renting out campus facilities to allow only groups that can say they don’t discriminate. Neal H. Hutchens, a professor of higher education at the University of Mississippi, told the Chronicle that, “Even as some universities consider potential changes to narrow access to campus for outside speakers, some states are passing campus-speech laws that may give such outside speakers stronger legal rights to speak on campus, though these protections are usually for invited speakers.”