Category: Mental Health

A continuation of our series on answers to the question:  “What experience or person in college most influenced your development as a human being?”

When Carter Jones left for college, he was thrilled to be moving on to the next chapter of his life, until a familiar anxiety dampened his excitement.  Would he fit in? – “like, really fit in” – as a student of color in a predominantly white school? He’d done it before, attending a suburban high school 15 miles outside his home in the city. His friends there had his back, but every new situation is a do-over when it comes to belonging. 

On one of the first days of school, Carter met Derrick, also a first-year student, and the two connected immediately. What they did not share in background (Derrick is White, from the suburbs, Carter is Black and Dominican from the inner city), they made up for in their mutual passions – sports, music, technology, and where to get the best pizza. The two became close friends. 

Halfway through that first year, Derrick shared with Carter that he had been struggling with his mental health. Like Carter, he had been worried about finding his place in a new environment. He  seemed preoccupied with his body image, though Carter said, “he looked fine to me.” In fact, Carter wasn’t aware how distressed his friend had become until he told him he was leaving school. It was then that Derrick explained that in his senior year of high school, he was so despondent, he had barely gone to school at all.   

When Derrick left college for home, it could have been the end of their friendship, but in many ways, it was just the beginning.

“I was like ‘are you kidding me?’ Here I find this great friend to go through school with and suddenly he leaves,” said Carter. “It was so disappointing.”

When Derrick left college for home, it could have been the end of their friendship, but in many ways, it was just the beginning. 

Then Carter did what Carter does.  He made it work.  Derrick lived in a town not far from campus and Carter found a way to visit often.  They’d watch football together, eat junk food and hang out. Soon, the family came to expect his Sunday visits and Derrick’s dad, Don, would pick Carter up at school and drop him off after dinner.  On those rides, they’d talk, and Carter was surprised to learn that Don, a successful businessman, had little money growing up.  He had put himself through college – the same college –  with loans and part-time jobs.  He could not afford to party in the dorms like the other students and, he, too, could feel out of place. 

“His upbringing was more like mine,” said Carter. “He was scaping by, hoping the next loan would come in to pay tuition.”

Derrick made the decision to return to school around the same time Carter was struggling to secure the money for that semester’s tuition.  “I am not going back without my best friend,” he told Carter, and they went to Don for advice.  Don created a financial plan for Carter that included working with aid officers, even the school’s president, to streamline tuition and allow for online participation so that Carter could graduate with a degree in computer science. When he needed an internship one summer, Don connected Carter with one of his own friends from college who was in technology.  

“His support for me was unbelievable,” said Carter.  “But it wasn’t just opening doors.  He was really invested in how I did and checked in all the time about my grades, how I was doing socially. I thanked him over and over again and he’d just say – stop, you are like a son to me.”

Asked how Don’s support changed his outlook on life, Carter said “Before, I felt like I was just getting by, not caring much about how I did but knowing how much faith Don had in me, it made me think of myself differently.  I began to really care about doing well. It mattered to me.”

Six years later, Derrick and Carter remain best friends and Carter continues to be part of Don’s family.  Carter may not ever know the depth of Don’s gratitude for showing up for his son, or how much of himself he saw in Carter, though it would benefit him for the rest of his life. But that’s not what this story is about – nor how it started.  It is about two college kids who find friendship and are smart or lucky enough to hold onto it. 

“It is amazing to me what relationships can do for your life,” said Carter. 

Names have been changed for this story.

College students consistently report feeling anxious and overwhelmed, many of them untethered by high levels of stress and the perception that they, alone, are struggling. What if colleges and universities offered these, and all students, a preventative well-being course where they learned resilience and coping skills, realistic perceptions of stress, and self-care? Would their levels of anxiety lessen? Would they feel more grounded?

This is the theory behind Be REAL, a mindfulness-based cognitive-behavioral coping program developed at the Center for Child and Family Well-being at the University of Washington (UW). The Be REAL Program (REsilient Attitudes & Living), is a six-week course that teaches students and staff a variety of skills that help improve well-being, starting with the acknowledgement that struggling is part of living.

While it partnered with the UW counseling center during the initial study, Be REAL is not a clinical solution. Rather, it is a population-based, preventative strategy aimed at helping all students thrive. 

“I think we are seeing a strong need to go from an individual approach to supporting mental health and well-being to a collective and a community approach,” said Sara McDermott, who leads the Be REAL training at the research center. “This is really important because our well-being is not related to one thing.  It’s related to our relationships, our stress levels, our politics, the food we have on the table, if we feel safe.”

The design of the Be REAL program is as sensible as its name. Typically, groups of students convene once a week for 90 minutes to learn mindfulness, stress management and cognitive behavioral skills that help with focus and executive functioning as well as self-compassion and compassion to others. In a combination of activities that build on themselves, the program is aimed at increasing students’ resilience by strengthening key protective factors, such as effective coping, perceptions of stress, and self-kindness, all of which can be in low supply among high performing students in demanding academic environments.

Originally launched as a study with a cohort of students living in residential halls at UW, the course is now available in a variety of settings. The flexibility built into the program is designed to meet students where they are, literally – whether it be dorms, classrooms or academic advising sessions.  As a general studies course, Be REAL can be a credit-bearing class for psychology students, or a mid-year elective for students needing to pick up one credit. (The Be REAL promotional video is featured on UW’s academic department web sites.) As a co-curricular program, it can be offered as a student support option for staff in residential life, advising, disability services, or any student-facing group.

“We are training folks in this work that already have relationships with students so we are supporting them in a way that is coming from the community,” said McDermott.  “That speaks volumes about how we can offer a collective approach to well-being.”

This “task-sharing model” does not require clinical skills but instead involves training people who work with students to facilitate groups, or to incorporate practices from the program into their work. Staff take the course themselves as part of their training to deliver the program in an effort to relate to and interpret what the students are experiencing which McDermott says is a benefit to both parties. “It’s really empowering to be able to say to students ‘Yeah, I tried that practice, and I found it really hard to do when you’re feeling a lot of different things.’”

McDermott says the program can also offer an opportunity for students to break out of the prescriptive patterns their majors demand. The self-compassion dynamic, and the sense of shared humanity, offers a different kind of learning experience. In an evaluation of the program, one student wrote, “the course created a space within academia where I felt seen and heard.”

99% of the students agreed that the program helped them learn ways for reducing stress.  

One of the program’s unique advantages is its position within a major university research center. Since its launch, the Be REAL program has been studied by researchers at UW’s Center for Child and Family Well-being and funded by patrons such as the Maritz Family Foundation and Brad and Judy Chase.  The  third study included 325 undergraduate students and 100 staff members at UW.  The published results noted, “Compared to students in the assessment-only group, students participating in Be REAL showed significant improvements in mindfulness, self-compassion, flourishing, resilience, happiness, emotion regulation problems, executive control, active coping, social connection, and depression and anxiety symptoms. These effects were maintained at follow-up.” 

In 2017 and 2018, the program conducted an evaluation in the UW residential halls and found that compared to students who had not yet received the program  students who participated in Be REAL reported improved well-being measures, including mindfulness, executive control, active coping, self-compassion, social connectedness, resilience and flourishing.  A majority of these changes were maintained at a three-month follow-up. 99% of the students agreed that the program helped them learn ways for reducing stress.  These and subsequent studies recommend the task-sharing model as an opportunity to include the entire campus community in the work of improving student and staff well-being.

McDermott says the proven efficacy of the program is both personally and practically rewarding.  With evidence comes additional funding and with funding, the program can expand.  Be REAL is now being offered in other colleges in addition to UW as well as with high-school-age teens. 

To learn more about the Be REAL program, including training opportunities to bring this program to your campus, contact, Sara McDermott, Be REAL Program Manager at saramcd@uw.edu

Alexis Redding’s career has many interconnections. She was a college counselor who became a developmental psychologist to better understand why her students were struggling, despite their good choices. She now teaches her students at the Harvard Graduate School of Education about the kinds of emotional supports first year college students need but don’t often articulate. As the faculty chair of the school’s Mental Health in Higher Education Professional Education Program, she brings her training as a counselor to the necessary task of addressing student mental health from a variety of touch points.

In her recent book “The End of Adolescence: The Lost Art of Delaying Adulthood,” Redding continues to demonstrate the interconnectedness of life. With co-author Nancy Hill, she makes a strong case for giving young people the time and the license to become authentic authors of their own lives, as opposed to being “fast-tracked” into adulthood. Through a uniquely effective research method, the authors are able to reject the narrative that today’s students are over-protected and under-prepared by showing that becoming an adult has always been emotionally difficult. In addition to evidence within the literature, Redding and Hill review abandoned tapes of interviews with the Harvard and Radcliffe Class of 1975 and conclude that there are far more similarities than differences between that cohort and today’s Gen Z students.

Now, Redding and Hill are working on an extension of that research that involves reconnecting with the class of 1975 and interviewing Harvard classes of 2025 and 2026. The work is not yet complete but in our interview for LearningWell, we get a glimpse into what they are continuing to learn about the important developmental period known as “the college years.”

Here is an excerpt from our interview.

How did your experience as a college counselor and then a graduate school professor motivate you to write the book?

From my vantage point as a college counselor, I became concerned about how much our students were struggling emotionally in college, especially during  the transition to school. And, while the struggles they experienced were quite similar to each other, no one seemed to be talking about them. Consequently, our students described feeling very alone and even worried they were doing something wrong. Once I saw this pattern, I knew that I could better prepare my high school students in advance, but I worried that we were missing opportunities to ease the transition and normalize these challenges for all students once they arrived at school. I wanted to do work to help ease the transition more broadly.

It all starts with how we talk about college. The story young people hear, far too often, is about college being the ‘best four years’ of their lives. The gap between what they expect and the reality can be profound. We don’t talk enough about what is going to be hard or help them develop strategies for navigating these predictable obstacles. And we do them a disservice by not being candid about the challenges they will encounter. Today, I train future student affairs practitioners to help build meaningful support structures and foster the kinds of conversations that I wish my own students had found at college so many years ago.

One motivation for writing our book was to help normalize these challenges for students, for their parents, for faculty members, and for student affairs practitioners as well. We want to empower students and everyone who cares about them to understand what it’s really going to be like and to give them the language to talk about it openly. It’s great to see how this simple change can have such a profound impact.

The way you do that is amazing – revealing what college students of almost five decades ago were feeling from interviews done on the class of 1975. Did you and your co-principal investigator go looking for this kind of information?

Not at all! I discovered that these interviews existed when I was doing research on achievement culture in an old attic building here at Harvard. I came across some misplaced pieces of paper that suggested a study had been done about the college experience in the 1970s that no one ever wrote about. I wanted to know more. (My father was an archeologist, and he trained this sort of curiosity in me.) It took about nine months to figure out where these data had come from, and then to track down the recordings of the interviews. Nobody thought they still existed. But, after many months of calling up box after box from archival storage and going through the attic and the basement to find all the data, I put the entire study back together again and even found the original recordings. We had incredible sound technicians lift the student voices off these degrading old reel-to-reel tapes and we eventually listened to these student interviews from 1972-1975 on our iPhones.

Were you surprised at what you discovered?

Nancy and I went in thinking we would study what was different between college in the 1970s and college today. We thought it would be an incredible time capsule to document what had changed over nearly half a century. It was startling when we began to listen to the recordings because there was so little actual difference. Both of us were struck by how similar those students were to the students who we advise and teach today. It was an interesting puzzle for us. I even coded the data three different times using three different analytic techniques because we were looking for differences. But what we kept coming back to was similarity. And eventually, we realized, that was a powerful conclusion that really contradicted a lot of our popular narratives about “kids today.”

Remarkably, in all the archival work, I ultimately found the documents that told us why the original research team abandoned the study. We had assumed it was because Dr. William Perry, who led the original study, had retired. But then we found minutes from the meeting where they made the decision. It turns out that the motivation for the project was to replicate a study they conducted in the 1950s because they had also assumed they would find that “kids today” were so different 25 years later. What they determined through their analysis was that there was essentially no difference in the developmental experience between those two cohorts. For them, this was a failure. Of course, that was the exact conclusion we had already come to through our analysis decades later, but we had a different take. We were excited to understand why there were such meaningful similarities and to unpack that in our research.

Recognizing the parallels around loneliness and isolation across generations can help us better understand what is ‘typical’ and what is a genuine ‘crisis.’ 

Whenever we present this work, people inevitably ask, “but what about social media? What about covid?” And, of course, we asked those questions too. It would be silly to imagine those realities don’t impact our lived experiences. Of course they do! But what stays the same is the developmental experience, the process of figuring out who you are and asking the big questions: “Who am I? Who do I want to be? What do I want my life to look like?” That experience is not tied to a specific decade or a specific moment in time, despite how much has changed between the generations.

What implications do you think this has for addressing some of the emotional and behavioral health struggles college students report today?

For me, it’s most important to recognize that college has always been hard for a lot of people and that these challenges are predictable and follow some established patterns. One of the things we documented in our research was the profound sense of loneliness that was reported, especially in the first two years. And students talk about those challenges in similar ways between the 1975 and the 2025 cohorts. Recognizing the parallels around loneliness and isolation across generations can help us better understand what is ‘typical’ and what is a genuine ‘crisis.’ As soon as a student calls home to say they’re having trouble or questioning if they fit in at school, family members can immediately – and understandably – panic. But if we understand that this is an expected challenge and that this is indeed typical of the student experience, we can have very different conversations before that call happens and we can respond in ways that can be more helpful in the moment as well.

A strong theme in the book is our needing to give students time to pause the fast tracks of their lives and discover who they are. How did your research influence this conclusion?

One of the biggest similarities across the two cohorts is the intense pressure young people feel to have it all figured out on day one. Students in both generations also struggle to navigate differences between what they envision for the future and what their parents expect, what their friends are doing, and what society says. It can be hard to take action when their goals diverge from those external stories. Trusting their internal voice is growth edge for students in this age group and something we can scaffold.

We tend to push students to make decisions about their future before they are ready. And our students get very mixed messages from us, especially when they’re coming into a place with a liberal arts curriculum. They are told: “it’s time to explore, it’s time to test out different ways of knowing and learning.” But we simultaneously say, “Be careful! If you don’t take this course now, the door will close. You won’t stay on track and you will miss out.” If we believe that students need more time for exploration, our curriculum genuinely needs to allow for that.

This story now continues. Tell us about your current work?

We are still fascinated by the similarities across the generations, but we are seeking to identify meaningful differences and continue to test our hypotheses as well. With that in mind, we are replicating the study with the classes of 2025 and 2026. We are using the exact same protocol, interviewing students annually an asking just one single question, “what stood out to you from the academic year?” We are three years into that work now. As in the original study, we are only following Harvard students so we have a one-to-one comparison, but the hope is, of course, to be able to expand and study at very different institutions that are more representative of college students as a whole. This is really just the first step.

The other exciting follow up is that we were granted permission to reopen the original study, and so we’ve spent the last two years interviewing the original participants from the Class of 1975. It is such a gift to get to do this work. The last time we heard from these participants was in June of 1975 when they were 22 or 23 years old, graduating and making decisions about going to grad school or the workforce. Now we meet them in their early seventies and they are at another pivot point – retirement. And few of them thought about this study at all in the 45 years in between. So, we can capture their stories in two very distinctive and pivotal moments in their lives.

The students who found their way to mentors had the help they needed to ask meaningful questions — What do I really want to do?

We first ask these participants to tell us the story of their life as they would tell it today. Then we ask them if they want to listen to their recordings and meet their younger selves. It’s a fascinating time capsule of their lives from about 19-23 years old. They write reflections after each of the four recordings, and then they come back and participate in an interview to make meaning of both what they heard and how it’s different and similar from their recollections.

What are you learning?

It’s too early to share anything beyond top line takeaways, (we’re just now wrapping up the interviews), but one of the important things that we are hearing has to do with how they remember their time in college. None of them remember college being as hard as what they hear themselves talking about on the recordings. That’s simply not the story that they have told themselves for almost half a century. They forgot how lonely they felt. And that’s totally natural – knowing that things turned out ok softened the intensity of the emotions that they felt in the moment.

The other thing that has emerged from this work, and something Nancy and I care deeply about: a confirmation of the importance of mentorship. The students who found their way to mentors had the help they needed to ask meaningful questions — What do I really want to do? How do I translate my interests into a vocation? Having followed up with these students 50 years later, we were able to see how much even the smallest mentoring interaction mattered to their lives.

Unfortunately, too many students – in both generations – don’t have meaningful mentoring experiences. In the absence of genuine mentorship, it is too easy to land on a default path. Colleges and universities can be more intentional about creating opportunities for students to have a range of mentoring experience – not just the big, long-term relationships we tend to prioritize now. The small-scale mentorship interactions matter a lot – even 50 years later!

Maggie Messina graduated from the Cox School of Business at Southern Methodist University (SMU) in 2022. She works in Private Client Business Development at Cambridge Associates in Boston. Here is her response to the question: “What experience or person in college most influenced your development as a human being?”

College is a formative experience for all. It’s a time when you leave the safety of your hometown, the friends you’ve known forever, and all that is familiar to you. Amidst the unfamiliar faces and places, you begin to search for belonging. For me, during my first two years of college, an unexpected yet incredibly meaningful place of connection was the dining hall. 

At the heart of my dining hall experience was Derek, the welcoming presence at the swipe station. Derek wasn’t just the person who checked my student ID as I walked in—he became a constant source of positivity and encouragement during my transition to college life. As a freshman finding my footing, Derek always greeted me with an enthusiastic high five and hello. During the whirlwind of sorority rush week, he congratulated me when I got into my top-choice sorority, Tri Delta, even throwing his hands into a triangle to represent it everytime I walked through the doors wearing all my new merch. 

Derek wasn’t just the person who checked my student ID —he became a constant source of positivity and encouragement during my transition to college life. 

But it wasn’t just the celebratory moments that made Derek special—it was the way he showed up for me during the tough times. When I felt homesick or defeated by a bad grade, Derek was there with encouraging words and a hug that always made the day seem a little brighter. 

What I learned most from Derek is that kindness matters. Small gestures—like smiling and waving at someone as they pass, holding the door open for a stranger, or offering a pencil to your classmate when they forget—can have a ripple effect far beyond what we can see. Today, as a young professional, I strive to embody that same sense of kindness. It’s one of my current firm’s values, and I take pride in representing it every day. 

What if higher education made student wellbeing a goal on par with graduation rates and GPA’s? That is the organizing vision behind the Flourishing Academic Network (FAN), a group of centers, institutes, and universities across the United States and Canada dedicated to embedding flourishing throughout higher education for the benefit of students, communities and society.

The idea to gather like-minded institutions into a flourishing collaborative grew from the pioneering efforts of four big thinkers at three separate universities. David Germano, a religious historian at the University of Virginia and former Director of the school’s Contemplative Sciences Center, was determined to connect the work he was doing in mindfulness and flourishing to the emerging crisis in college student mental health.

Germano was joined in this purpose by colleagues Richard Davidson, William James and Vilas Professor of Psychology and Psychiatry and Director of the Center for Healthy Minds at the University of Wisconsin; Mark Greenberg, former Director of the Prevention Research Center at Pennsylvania State University; and Rob Roeser, the Bennett Pierce Professor of Caring and Compassion at Penn State. The scholars came from different disciplines but shared a common belief that embedding flourishing concepts into the college experience was both a pragmatic approach to addressing mental health issues among students and a moral imperative for higher education.

A major contribution of the alliance was the creation of “The Art and Science of Human Flourishing,” an interdisciplinary course they created that helps students develop skills and perspectives that support individual and collective flourishing, defined as “living a fulfilling life of meaning, purpose and a sense of belonging.” 

The course was launched in 2017 at all three universities. With consistent outcome data showing significant improvement in mental health symptoms among participants, the collaborators soon formed what they called “The Flourishing Academic Network” to welcome more colleges and universities into the learning community. But like so many initiatives thrown off course by the pandemic, the 2020 national conference of interested universities was delayed until 2022. The changes within FAN schools that occurred during that gap brought starts and stops to the new network but the desire to work collaboratively to apply the science of flourishing to the lives of college students remained strong among the group.

While still nascent, the Flourishing Academic Network is now finding its footing with plans for in-person convenings and ongoing collaboration among 20 or so members.  Some believe the current vulnerabilities within the sector may be an opening to include student flourishing as a primary goal of higher education, though not without disruption.

The FAN charter underlying the organization’s mission states, “We believe centering student wellbeing and flourishing, bridging the gap between student affairs and academics, and changing how higher education systems operate and are designed can establish new pathways for flourishing.”

The following is the first in a series of features on FAN member institutions.

The Renée Crown Wellness Institute:

The administrative backbone of the FAN is now at the Renée Crown Wellness Institute at the University of Colorado Boulder.  With a mission “to promote the wellness of young people and the systems and adults who support them through interdisciplinary research-practice partnerships,” the Institute is one of 12 research centers within the university.  It was founded in 2019 just months before the onset of the pandemic and while many organizations immediately shut down, the Crown Institute went to work providing resources that were in high demand. In the fall of 2020, undergraduate students within schools at CU Boulder were required to take a course, developed by the Crown Institute and its collaborators, called “Health, Society and Wellness in COVID-19 Times.” 

Designed by faculty members of diverse disciplines working collaboratively with undergraduate students, the course not only supported the CU Boulder community during stressful times, it put on display the methods and mission of a very different kind of university research institute. 

Some believe the current vulnerabilities within the higher ed sector may be an opening to include student flourishing as a primary goal, though not without disruption. 

Dr. Sona Dimidjian is the Director of the Crown Institute, and a professor in the Department of Psychology and Neuroscience at CU Boulder. She has both a PhD in clinical psychology and master’s in social work and worked as a therapist with adolescents for many years. “Our research is really focused on action,” she said. “We are interested in changing systems in classrooms, in healthcare settings, in living rooms and dorm rooms because we want a bigger and faster change in young people’s lives.”

The term the Crown Institute uses to define its work is “interdisciplinary research-practice partnerships.” In this sense, the Crown Institute is less of a lab than it is a workshop where those for whom the research is intended (young people, parents, educators) are involved in solving real world problems. Collaborative design is informed and influenced by the expertise and experiences of community partners who work alongside the university researchers. Its intent is to disseminate and apply that research back into the community and on behalf of the partners who have been engaged.

“We believe that our research products are much more sustainable, meaningful, and equitable when the intended audiences of research are included in the design,” said Dr. Leah Peña Teeters, Outreach and Education Director for the Crown Institute and point person for the FAN at CU Boulder.

The Crown Institute has three research strands: children and young people; families and communities, educators and schools, all of which apply the same approach. Consider “Alma,” a peer-to-peer program for new and expectant mothers who are struggling with anxiety and depression. Moms and their peer mentors meet six to eight times utilizing peer support strategies that are informed by the science of behavioral activation. The Alma team developed the program collaboratively, grounded in Dimidjian’s many years of conducting research on the mental health of parents. In assessing their interventions, Crown Institute researchers have found a significant reduction in anxiety and depression, leading to the program’s expansion in other communities.

The children and young people research strand is at the center of the Institute’s work and its primary connection to the FAN.  Here, active initiatives like The Mindful Campus Program have broad appeal among Gen Z students who, as a cohort, continue to report significant mental health issues. Co-designed with undergraduate students, The Mindful Campus Program aims to increase access to mindfulness and compassion-based practices that have proven to support the mental health and wellness of students.  Other programs include the mind.body. voice. program, which promotes body acceptance, belonging, and leadership while reducing vulnerability to disordered eating among girls and young women in middle, high school, and college. Another program, The CU Well Brainstudy, examines how CU Boulder undergraduates experience wellness and cope with stress.

Each of these initiatives includes the deep participation of young people.  According to the Crown Institute, young people serve as both participants and designers of its work, providing vision and feedback to inform the iterative design of its programs and practices. The Crown Institute directs an Undergraduate Research Fellows Program where Psychology and Neuroscience students begin a three-year research journey at the start of their sophomore year, leading to independent research projects in their senior year.  Students, who are given a stipend to compensate for their time apprenticing and working in research labs, are matched with faculty and work closely with them as mentors.

“We are focused on training the next generation of researchers, scholars, and practitioners with the skill sets that really center wellbeing and flourishing across disciplines,” said Teeters. 

The Crown Institute is less of a lab than it is a workshop where those for whom the research is intended are involved in solving real world problems

Alison Ofori is a third-year integrated physiology major at CU Boulder.  She joined the mind. body.voice. project as a peer facilitator after one of her favorite professors suggested she would be a great addition to the team. As a pre-health student, she had always been interested in doing research but felt like working in a lab or a hospital fell a little flat. 

“When I heard about this opportunity, I was like ‘Yes! this is really different.  I get to work with real people.’”

Orofi is particularly energized by the work she is now doing with high school and middle school girls on external vs internal beliefs. 

“We have the girls come in and engage with our curriculum and we ask specifically tailored questions that help them connect with their mind and then what society may be telling them.  For example, we might ask ‘what do you think the perfect woman is?’  A lot of times they’ll answer first with everything society tells them. And then we’ll reframe the question and ask it based on what they think is suitable for them, not society, and we’ll get different answers.”

Orofi, who is the eldest of three sisters, says the work she has done with the Crown Institute has helped her evolve personally.

“I am very mindful now of how I speak to myself, how I talk to other people,” she said. “What Crown is trying to remind us about is that we all go through these struggles and it’s important to bring some conversation to that.”

Like many institutions within the FAN, the Crown Institute also focuses on the teaching of flourishing through specifically designed curricula.  Dimidjian teaches a course through the Department of Psychology and Neuroscience called Flourishing, Belonging, and Liberation that is anchored in the work of other institutions in the FAN as well as the Mindful Campus Program in the Crown Institute. Specifically, the course is an adaptation of The Art and Science of Human Flourishing course, adapted at the Crown Institute at CU with doctoral student, Caitlin McKimmy, and Professors Donna Meija and Natalie Avalos. It examines psychological science to explore, define, and apply the construct of human flourishing, defined as “an existence filled with wellness, purpose, connection, and justice.” 

Dimidjian says the feedback she receives from the students who take the course is consistently inspiring.  “I have had so many students say to me ‘I’ve never had another class like this in my entire time at college’ or ‘I’ve been waiting for a class like this.’ I had one student say to me ‘I can’t wait to come to this class. No matter how exhausted I may be from work and classes, I always feel rejuvenated.’” 

Dimidjian believes the FAN connections have been important to the design and offering of the flourishing course: “We rely on the expertise and generosity of our friends and colleagues in the FAN. It is exciting to share our learning about how to bring a focus on flourishing into all the facets of our campuses.”

The Crown Institute’s mindfulness work closely aligns with the FAN, which has strong roots in contemplative science. Teeters underscores that mindfulness is only part of the pathway to what she calls “the crosswalk between the inner and outer resources needed for flourishing.”

“We recognize that in human flourishing, we can support individuals with contemplative practices, and we also need the systems change work that supports the creation of more just systems in which to practice and thrive. The two go hand in hand and can be mutually informing.”

Teeters sees her coordinating role for FAN within the Crown Institute as a natural extension of her work in outreach and education. She hopes with more opportunities for interaction and scholarship, each institution will learn from one another and enhance their own work as a result.

“I think there’s a lot to be learned from what works and doesn’t across institutions and across settings and one of our hopes in the next iteration of FAN is to bring more youth and undergraduate voices to the direction and leadership of student flourishing.”

Dimidjian concurred.

“There are amazing colleges and universities represented in the FAN currently and deep dedication among all the individual members to the flourishing of students, staff and faculty on our campuses. This work is just at its beginning in many ways, and I think everyone is enthusiastic about the potential for moving from intention to action.”

This year’s Hazing Prevention Week brought more than just an important public awareness message about the dangers of a pervasive yet under-examined ritual.  On September 27^th, the bipartisan “Stop Campus Hazing Act” passed the House of Representatives, edging the country closer to eliminating hazing on college campuses where its strong hold on Greek life and other membership organizations has led to trauma and tragedy. 

But while anti-hazing advocates applaud the new legislation, experts warn that enforcement efforts must be paired with evidence-based prevention strategies.  Doing so requires an understanding of the complex context within which hazing occurs and proliferates.  

The Timothy J. Piazza Center for Fraternity and Sorority Research has been working on this challenge for several years. Founded in honor of a young man who lost his life to hazing in 2017 at Penn State University, the center engages researchers from several universities to examine how to prevent hazing while promoting a healthy and safe environment within fraternities and sororities as well as student groups and athletics.  In September, researchers at the center published a new report in New Directions for Student Services:

Volume 2024, Issue 187
Special Issue: Understanding and Addressing Hazing: Contextual Perspectives, Prevention Strategies, and Case Studies

The monograph offers a literature review woven through eight articles, exploring the motivations for hazing and the complicated challenges involved in preventing it, including the lure of belonging and acceptance.  “There is a human nature element to this problem that we really haven’t yet attacked” said Dr. Patrick Biddix, one of the lead authors on the report. “It is about people’s desire to belong – especially young and vulnerable people who will do whatever they feel is important to fit in.  Hazing takes advantage of that vulnerability.” 

Biddix is a research fellow at the Piazza Center, a professor at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville and an advisor to a national sorority organization.  In college, he held leadership positions in his fraternity and, later, spent many years as an advisor to fraternities and sororities at Washington University in St. Louis.  The experience helped him both understand the nuances of hazing and conclude it needed to be prevented, not mitigated.

“In the past, we’ve approached hazing as helping students understand the difference between what is acceptable and what is high-risk behavior,” said Biddix.  “But we quickly realized that it was confusing for students to pick and choose what may be ok. That is why we are now so focused on prevention.” 

Another co-author on the report is Dr. Emily Perlow, Assistant Vice President and Dean of Students at Worcester Polytechnic Institute (WPI). She says a key part of her day job focuses on “ensuring that students are having a positive experience on campus that keeps them whole and helps them feel a deep sense of belonging.”  As a student, Perlow was also a leader in her sorority and says she was motivated to produce the report to help support student leaders and practitioners on campus who are working on these issues.  

“We wanted advisers, coaches, and all those working in student organizations to have evidence-based information that was more widely accessible than a series of academic journals,” she said. 

In doing their research, Perlow and Biddix soon found that the hazing literature, which was only a few decades old, provided information about the incidents of hazing and the demographics involved in it, but had very little in the way of prevention practices, unlike the prevention literature of other public health problems on campus such as sexual violence and excessive drinking.   Adding to the lack of evidence-based guidance on prevention, was the inconsistency in both the definition of the term “hazing” and the way in which people understood and perceived its risk.  

As the authors point out, hazing has “a storied past” reinforced by media images depicting romantic notions of young people bonding over shared adversity as a means of acceptance.  But what is presented as “good old-fashioned college fun” is a significant safety threat on college campuses.  Hundreds of families have experienced the unthinkable grief that the Piazza’s endured from “bonding gone bad” where life-threatening alcohol use and high-risk behaviors have injured, traumatized or killed young people in the spirit of belonging.  In sororities, “mean girl” behavior and practices of exclusion cause emotional abuse. And yet, the practice persists. 

The report states “At the college level, hazing, which includes high-risk drinking, social isolation, personal servitude, and humiliation, occurs across a range of student groups.”   

And while hazing is wide-spread – more than 55% of college students involved in clubs, teams and organizations experience hazing – few students acknowledge or even understand they have been hazed.   In other research cited in the report, “26% of students belonging to clubs, teams, and organizations indicated experiencing at least one hazing behavior, yet only 4.4% identified it as hazing when asked directly. This dissonance between student experiences with hazing and their ability to label it is problematic for prevention.” 

For the authors, this is where words matter.  Differing and sometimes contradictory definitions of hazing have been unhelpful at best with legal terms or policies pertaining only to one organization leaving students with mixed or unclear messages. With misunderstanding comes an opening to sidestep accountability.  The report quotes students as concluding, “if everything is hazing, then nothing is hazing.”  

Hazing is fundamentally about power. It’s about exerting power over less powerful individuals. 

With the input of experts like Perlow and Biddix, the Piazza Center has developed a definition for hazing that captures its complexities and motivations.

 “Hazing is a power dynamic behavior aimed at screening, fostering bonds, or establishing standing in an organization that risks the health and safety of individuals, causing deliberate or unforeseen physical and/or emotional harm counter to organization purposes.”  

Perlow reiterates the message saying, “Hazing is fundamentally about power. It’s about exerting power over less powerful individuals.  And it is not just about the joining process. It is also a way to establish status in the organization.”  She believes the Piazza Center definition has distinct components that strengthen its effectiveness when used in prevention strategies, largely because it resonates in some way with students.  

In including “unforeseen” harm, the authors allow for the many cases where carelessness or lack of maturity drive the behavior.  “A lot of times students are not thinking about the risks inherent in some of the activities they are engaging in,” said Perlow. “It doesn’t take them off the hook – there’s still responsibility, but in some cases, it is important to understand there is not an intentional effort to harm.” 

Another distinction written into the definition is aimed at getting students to understand that hazing practices are inconsistent with the organization’s mission and goals.  In defining “counter to organization purposes” the authors offer an example.  “You are not an athletic organization so why are you ordering forced calisthenics in a fraternity house basement?”   

Perlow says students understand when the negative consequences of hazing overtake the desired  intent. “I think there are some components of the hazing process that achieve really powerful outcomes,” she said.  “You go through a really difficult, adverse situation and you feel a sense of closeness with others who went through that with you, but we really don’t need to be enacting trauma to create bonds with one another.” 

In working with students, Perlow validates their desire to achieve positive outcomes from hazing – like having strong relationships with others — while getting them to question and change their hazing behavior. “Students can wrap their brains around the idea that if they are not taking away the outcome they care about, they’re pretty receptive to changing the tactic.” 

Perlow’s behavior change example is part of a public health approach to hazing prevention that is outlined in detail in the new report. Like other public health challenges, hazing is largely affected by environmental factors including messages that include the tacit approval of authority figures. The authors argue that with the clear definition of hazing, “stakeholders can develop preventative strategies that empower students to challenge, reject, and reshape environmental messages that mischaracterize hazing as positive, normalized or expected.” 

LearningWell magazine, together with the Coalition for Transformational Education and Gallup, recently hosted “Meaning Matters: a discussion on how higher education can help students find their purpose in life and career.”  The conversation included the definition of “purpose,” what the data show about its benefits to self and society, and the way it seems to have eluded young people today, either through misunderstanding or the dominance of more powerful forces. 

“Purpose work” has become common on college campuses these days, perhaps as an antidote to the vocationalism that seems to have overtaken what has traditionally been college’s role as a laboratory for self-discovery, or so the panel pondered.  With a growing body of literature on the mental health and wellbeing benefits of having purpose, campus leaders struggling to address college students’ mental health issues are taking note. So, too, are career development professionals on campus, given the data that show that having purpose in your work leads to a host of benefits, including retention.  

The LearningWell panel was well suited to explore these dynamics and advise on how to make “finding purpose” a meaningful pursuit for students. William Damon, a developmental psychologist who leads the Stanford Center on Adolescents, is arguably the country’s most often-quoted purpose scholar. His definition of purpose as a goal with an “outside of oneself” dimension has become the most widely accepted in the field. Knowing what purpose is (“an active commitment”) and what it is not (“a dream”) is important for educators and students who often mistake it for something that can be imposed or randomly identified.

“Purpose is a goal that you stick with. It’s not a one-time thing,” said Damon. “And it’s something that’s meaningful to you. If somebody orders you to do something, even if it’s a valuable thing to do, you’re not doing it purposefully.”

Joining Damon on the panel was Gallup Senior Partner Stephanie Marken, who brought the audience through the organization’s data showing the correlation between having purpose and overall wellbeing. She began by identifying a strong motivation for schools and companies to take this work seriously.  “What we know is the consequence of not having purpose is a lowering of wellbeing so, in that way, purpose can be an incredible lever and tool to improve wellbeing and mitigate some of what we see as a mental health crisis in the United States.”

Regarding finding purpose in one’s work, Marken said, “What we find in our research is for those who don’t have a sense of sense of purpose in their work, just 6% of them are thriving in their overall wellbeing,” she said. “When you look at those who do have a sense of purpose in their work, 60-plus percent are thriving in their wellbeing – essentially a 10-times-fold difference.”

Marken noted that the gap between young people’s desire to find purpose in their work and their ability to do so should be a red flag for both colleges and employers. A study Gallup conducted with Bates College found that a majority of adults reported that they felt like having purpose in their work was very or extremely important to them (about 80%) yet just less than half of them reported they had purpose in their work.

In considering the roots of the disparity between young people wanting purpose and not finding it, our third panelist, Wendy Fischman, offered some theories.  Fischman is project director at Project Zero at the Harvard Graduate School of Education. She, along with Howard Gardner, is the author of The Real World of College, What Higher Education is and What it can be,” which posits that higher education has lost its way by not focusing on or communicating its primary mission – which is to offer transformational learning. The wake left by this loss of footing has been filled with campus cultures dominated by transactional mindsets that minimize or dismiss purpose.

“What we found in our research with over a thousand college students was a very strong preoccupation with “self.” Students talked about grades and first-year jobs. There was very little talk of meaning or purpose as Bill describes it.”

Fischman said that if colleges and universities put authentic learning first, and communicated that clearly, students (and their families) would be less inclined to adopt a transactional mindset around their educational experience.  Marken also believes messaging matters, particularly for students who feel financial pressure amidst the rising cost of tuition. 

“There are so many students who are thinking ‘I have to have a job when I leave here and what is my shortest path to doing so.’ I think we also have to make sure that we’re making that connection for students, that when you’re doing something that you are purposeful in, you will be more productive. You will be more successful.”  

Purpose is a goal that you stick with. It’s not a one-time thing.

Marken drew on Gallup’s research showing that certain kinds of learning experiences in college can lead to wellbeing over time, including finding purpose.  She recommended that colleges and universities prioritize experiential learning, mentorships, and internships and make these experiences available and affordable for all students. 

All of the panelists agreed that more should be done to ensure that students understand that purpose and success are not opposing goals.  In fact, some of the most interesting parts of the discussion involved disrupting assumptions many of us have about purpose, starting with it being something reserved for “do-gooders.”

“It’s not as if purposeful people are somehow martyrs, or even extreme altruists, that they sacrifice everything about their own personal lives,” said Damon. “Data show that people who are highest on purpose are also very energetic, and very high on self-goals such as entertainment or travel.”

Damon believes one of the best ways to teach purpose is to provide flesh and blood examples. He encourages all those who engage with students to help provide examples and asks students to look around them and consider “Who do I admire?”

Asked what schools can do to help students understand the value of college as a way to find yourself, including your purpose, Fischman said, “I would ask every student, ‘What is it that college can provide that you can’t get anywhere else?’ and I think going through that exercise would help them see college as a once in a lifetime opportunity to develop yourself more fully.”

Here is the full webinar:

Dr. Sarah Lipson waited all year to get the report she hoped would confirm that last year’s data was not an outlier. 

“Each year over the past decade had been the worst we’ve seen in terms of prevalence rates until the 2022-2023 survey indicated things got a little better in terms of anxiety, depression and flourishing,” she said. “With the 2023-2024 data now in, it looks like we may be turning the corner.” 

Dr. Lipson is a principal investigator of the national Healthy Minds Study, one of the largest data sets used to determine the mental health and wellbeing of the college student population.  The data she awaited indeed showed that the prevalence of depression, anxiety, and suicidality among college students has decreased for two consecutive years for the first time in a decade. Meanwhile, flourishing (positive mental health) among students has increased during this same time frame, having been in decline for ten straight years. 

The latest data were collected between September 2023 and May 2024 from over 104,000 undergraduate and graduate students at 196 institutions, including community colleges, technical colleges, HBCUs and other minority-serving institutions. The variances were small – a 5% drop in anxiety, a 6% drop in depression and a 6% increase in flourishing — but the change itself is significant. 

“Because it’s a population-based survey, Healthy Minds is often a starting point where we can say ‘here’s what we see at a population level in terms of trends,’” said Lipson, who is also an associate professor at the Boston University School of Public Health.  “The levels are still very high, but we are hopeful we have the start of a positive trend.” 

Asked what might be driving the shift, Lipson said, “There’s a broader context for sure, but I’d like to think that a lot of it has to do with what’s happening on campus in terms of increased awareness and support and more schools taking a public health approach to addressing student mental health.  I hope so.”

The latest healthy Minds survey report is a glimmer of hope for colleges and universities yearning for some form of good news related to the mounting mental health problems their students have reported over the years. Yet despite the progress, this year’s data still produced last year’s headline: too many students are emotionally unwell.  According to the survey, a third of students screened positive for some form of anxiety and almost four in 10 met the criteria for moderate or severe depression. 

Furthermore, the 2023-2024 changes in anxiety, depression and flourishing were a return to what students were reporting before the spikes caused by the pandemic.  And while cautiously optimistic, Lipson points to data in the report that reveals one of the most tenacious problems in college student mental health – the unmet need for services among students who need them. According to the 2023-2024 report, almost 40% of students who screened positive for anxiety or depression are not receiving any kind of mental health services.

“The levels are still very high, but we are hopeful we have the start of a positive trend.” 

“Even though the rates of treatment seeking have gone up, there’s still a significant unmet need that exists, with a lot of inequities in it,” she said.  “From a public health perspective, this is a missed opportunity during a really epidemiologically vulnerable, psychosocially significant time between 18 and 25.”

The Long and Winding Road

According to the Healthy Minds study, rates of depression and anxiety among college students doubled from 2010 to 2021 (from 20% to 44% for depression; and 20% to 37% for anxiety).  An early sign of the looming crisis was the increase in demand for campus counseling services which often went unmet.

According to the Center for Collegiate Mental Health at Penn State University, between fall 2009 and spring 2015, counseling center utilization increased by an average of 30-40%, while enrollment increased by only 5%. More serious consequences ranged from significant stop-out rates due to mental health problems to tragic deaths by suicide on campuses throughout the country. The pandemic fueled what was already a burning fire, adding isolation and lack of connection to the myriad of potential drivers.  In a 2021 survey by the American Council on Education, college presidents rated student mental health their number one concern.

Since then, most colleges and universities have put in place a range of responses, from service improvements to preventative strategies aimed at improving overall wellbeing. By the time the US Surgeon General came out with his young adult mental health advisory in 2021, it was hard to find an institution in the country that wasn’t working hard on mental health, or at least talking about doing so. Most schools have increased capacity for services through a number of strategies including utilizing a triage approach that prioritizes services by acuity, digital mental health interventions like apps and teletherapy and increasing staff when feasible. 

Cultural changes on campus have included prioritizing mental health through chief wellness officer positions and ongoing student-driven initiatives like awareness campaigns that reduce stigma and peer counseling which many students, particularly those of marginalized identities, find accessible and effective. The focus on student mental health and wellbeing on campus has encouraged other student-centered initiatives involving equity and basic needs and has raised questions about faculty’s role in student mental health and what academic policies or pedagogical changes may be needed to improve wellbeing. 

The question, which the recent Healthy Minds data raises, but does not fully answer, is, has all this activity had an impact?

“I agree with the Healthy Minds team that increased attention to mental health since the pandemic and additional resources for mental health are likely contributing factors to the slightly declining trend in anxiety and depression and slight increase in flourishing,” said Nance Roy, Chief Clinical Officer at the Jed Foundation, the country’s leading non-profit dedicated to protecting emotional health and preventing suicide in young people.

Roy also theorized that students have gotten better at distinguishing between “normal” feelings of anxiety and depression and clinical anxiety and depression. She believes the change in the way we talk about mental health – away from “crisis” and toward positive mental health – has been helpful.

The Jed Foundation itself may have had a role to play in the potential turnaround by providing schools a response to mental health issues, including suicides on campus, with mental health strategic planning support.  Launched in 2013 and now in 500+ campuses, the JED Campus Program engages colleges and universities in collaborative work over the course of four years. After conducting an initial needs assessment, a JED advisor draws on the data to create a strategic plan that, when implemented seriously by leadership on down, has led to impressive outcomes. Its recent impact report suggests that the students on campuses who engaged with JED reported lower rates of anxiety, depression and suicidality and increased flourishing, GPA and retention rates.

Another major player that emerged during the consecutive years of escalating prevalence rates is telehealth or teletherapy, most often provided by a third party.  First introduced as a potential way to expand capacity within counseling centers, telehealth became a permanent fixture during the pandemic and is now widely used.  These services range significantly in scope but the most popular provide components such as a clinically-staffed, 24/7 crisis line; online therapy appointments with a remote clinician one can choose, and apps or access to wellbeing supports such as mindfulness.  There are a number of advantages to these services, staring with convenience in time and place, a prerequisite for flexibility-focused Gen Z.

Uwill is a leading mental health and wellness company serving 3 million students at 400+ institutions in all 50 states and 40 countries.  Students begin their Uwill experience by indicating  how quickly they want to see a licensed therapist, with the option to choose a same-day appointment as well as preferences such as race, ethnicity, gender and clinical need.  Amaura Kemmerer, LICSW ,is Uwill’s Director of Clinical Affairs and the former Associate Dean for Wellness at Northeastern University. She says that teletherapy options solve a number of problems that had always existed for mental health providers on campus. 

“Traditionally, students embraced in-person therapy over teletherapy.  However, in-person creates a barrier in trying to serve students after hours, off campus, or out of the state or country” she said. “During the pandemic, there was no choice but to move online and what has happened since is that students and counselors have realized the advantages – students can access therapy wherever they are and whenever they need it, or if they are uncomfortable going to a center, and they can choose the type of therapist they want to see, which is really important for students of certain identities.”

Kemmerer says over 60% of students engaged with Uwill report never having gone to therapy before, underscoring its benefit as a new onramp to care for students who might not otherwise seek help.  Ironically, while introduced as a salve for the capacity problem, digital therapy may be providing access to care for a new population of students who have not been seeking help on campus. But most college health professionals would agree that’s a good thing and are comfortable with its place among their care continuum.

According to the Healthy Minds study, rates of depression and anxiety among college students doubled from 2010 to 2021 (from 20% to 44% for depression; and 20% to 37% for anxiety).

“Even though the restrictions around the pandemic have eased, our students are still preferring digital therapy due to convenience,” said Dr. Zoe Ragouzeos, the Executive Director of Counseling and Wellness Services at New York University.  “And the data still reflect that the efficacy of remote treatment compares to that of in-person care.” 

It is clear that technology-based mental health support is here to stay but the lack of data on the full range of digital mental health tools – including apps that are self-directed or only include partial coaching — is a concern of Dr. Lipson’s.  She and her colleague, Dr. Daniel Eisenberg recently published a paper sponsored by the Ruderman Family Foundation concluding “although research has demonstrated that DMHI (Digital Mental Health Interventions) can be effective at improving mental health, the majority of widely used DMHIs in college settings have limited direct evidence of effectiveness in student populations.”

While they are supportive of the adoption of DMHI’s, Lipson and Eisenberg recommend colleges consider how these tools fit into campus mental health and wellbeing plans that take a preventative, population-based approach.  They call for rigorous evaluation of commonly used programs and more information about user engagement, particularly regarding whether or not these services are being accessed by students of color or groups that may be needing help but not seeking it.  In a separate effort, the researchers are working to create a comprehensive student mental health repository where easy access to evidence-based best practices will help campus professionals understand which interventions are best for which students. 

As campuses continue to work at improving student mental health in a variety of ways, Lipson believes we will need several more years of prioritizing mental health at a population level to truly understand how far the needle has moved.  In the meantime, the Healthy Minds team will continue to produce the indicators.