Category: Mental Health

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. 

It is a cold, rainy day in March, but Vassar’s campus still holds its appearance as the beautiful, contemplative place of learning for which it is famous. Its lush green quads and remarkable architecture reflect a traditional liberal arts experience. But like any community, Vassar is more than it appears to visitors. Over the past two decades, its landscape has significantly changed in many ways, both positive and challenging. 

Among its many distinctions, including its outsized number of famous alumni, Vassar’s President Elizabeth Bradley hopes the school will be known as a place of good health and wellbeing. To make this vision a reality, she recognizes that the college must establish a universal sense of belonging amid a new, more diverse student body where students of various identities express different expectations and needs. Like their Gen Z peers everywhere, many Vassar students struggle with their mental health.  

Since becoming President in 2017, Bradley has worked with faculty and the college’s senior leadership team to foster a campus of wellbeing as a key part of her administration’s agenda, with a focus on belonging in the classroom and in the community. “When I think of wellbeing, I think about our students’ ability to thrive, and to grow, and to learn to become confident young adults who will go out and do the things that are in their hearts to do,” she said. “You can’t thrive if you feel like you don’t belong — in or out of the classroom.”

A noted public health expert, Bradley believes success in this area requires all campus stakeholders to work on improving wellbeing within their respective realms and across departments when necessary. This means professors being attuned to the personal and emotional aspects of their students’ lives and practicing inclusive pedagogy along with their areas of expertise. Student affairs roles, such as the office of Student Growth and Engagement, steer students toward co-curricular activities that help them “thrive, not just survive.” 

Mental health services are highly utilized and, like many college counseling centers, the office is experimenting with new strategies like bringing community partners onto campus for students with acute needs. But even mental health is not confined to any one service, partly due to capacity and partly due to philosophy. Early in his tenure, Dean of the College Carlos Alamo-Pastrana asked, “Can we, as a community, shift our perspective on whose responsibility it is to think about wellness?” 

One inter-departmental effort that is central to wellbeing and belonging is the Office of Engaged Pluralism (EP). Like the term implies, EP seeks to engage all community members in acknowledging differences through an asset-lens where unique perspectives and norms are respected, if not universally agreed upon. It is both a program (offering workshops, trainings and events) and a pledge. The concept evolved from tensions on campus shortly after Vassar moved to need-blind admissions and the student body make-up changed significantly. 

All of these efforts, taken together, are demonstrations of the college’s commitment to building a campus of wellbeing, and one can’t help but wonder what role initiatives such as Engaged Pluralism may have played in more recent controversies, including the voluntary, and atypical, removal of the pro-Palestinian encampment at the school. But to better understand how Vassar’s intentionality on wellbeing and belonging has affected its students overall, LW discussed the topic with four students in various stages of their education. In this enlightening interview, the students talked honestly and graciously about their aspirations, their challenges, and what wellbeing means to them. Here is an edited transcript of some of what they had to say. 

Editor’s note: It is unclear whether any of the interviewees participated in the Vassar protest encampment which occurred after this conversation, but it is worth noting that each of them expressed support for the right to protest on this and other issues, though it is not reflected in this transcript. 

LW: Let’s start with mental health and wellbeing. What kinds of supports or strategies help you thrive here at Vassar?

Marissa is a junior majoring in Science, Technology and Society (STS) with a minor in prison studies.

Marissa: For me – I’m a student leader here on campus alongside a whole bunch of other amazing students. I’m the vice president of the Black Student Union. I’m the co-head of a small concert throwing organization that we have on campus. My friends are always saying, “Marissa, you’re so busy. How do you do it?” But I think the thing that allows me to do all these different things and be in all these different places but still be flourishing is the fact that I’m consistently working with people who all love it. We come together and we support each other and I think for me, thriving is being in these spaces where you are able to laugh but then cry about assignments and experience this whole breadth of emotions. The school has a counseling center, and there’s been times where I went there – some were good and some were not.But I feel like, overall, the thing that really allows me to continue going and not burn myself out is being in these spaces with these people. 

Prisha is a senior psychology major and international student from Bangalore, India.

Prisha: Can I add on to that? I think something that might go unnoticed, but that I feel has a big impact, is the fact that we acknowledge that mental health, your mental health, changes every day and that it does impact your work and your interpersonal relationships. Coming from an international standpoint, I think a lot of students come here as first-generation students arriving in a new country with all of these aspirations and goals for themselves and also expectations that I feel like they don’t give themselves enough grace around. They’re doing a lot here and their wellbeing is a part of something they need to take care of, not just their futures. 

For me, it’s in the really little things that I find solace; just having check-ins at the start of class or meetings like the “rose, thorn and bud question” — a rose is what went well this week. A thorn is something that didn’t go as well and a bud is something you’re looking forward to. Before I was asked those questions, I didn’t even think in that frame of mind of, “Oh, what went well this week?” I actually began to think about myself and what I’m putting out in the world, more than just going through the motions.

“My peers are a significant source of support for me. Another is my professors.”

Maya is a senior biochemistry and psychology double major.

Maya: I think I approach wellbeing from three avenues. My peers are a significant source of support for me. Another is my professors. I know that there are professors on campus who push you and want you to do your best, and sometimes it can feel very overwhelming. But there are other professors who are very, very understanding. I remember two years ago, I was going through a very difficult situation in my personal life and I was able to reach out to my professors and they immediately said, “I can be that avenue for you to make sure that you’re advocating for yourself and advocating for what you need during this time, extensions, whatever.” In general, professors will work with you, which is so nice on this campus. And that definitely helps a lot because things can get very overwhelming very quickly, especially during this time of year when you have burnout from papers and finals. 

But then the third avenue for me is all the work that I do as a leader on campus. I work at the women’s center. I’m a women’s center intern, and we do a lot of events that are centered around wellbeing, but I also lead a women of faith group. Religion is very important to me and has become even increasingly important to me as my years at Vassar have gone on. Which is interesting because a lot of people look at Vassar and they’re like, “Oh, it’s a liberal arts school. You could do so many other things. Why talk about religion?” I am a Christian and my beliefs have developed throughout my time here. And that’s because I’ve been able to ground myself in these groups and in these places where other people also believe. And the women of faith group, I mean we have people who are Jewish, we have people who are Muslim, we have people who are Christians and they’re coming from all different perspectives, but we’re able to unite about our experiences on this campus as well in life. And that has been so centering for me.

Mia is a first year, first-generation college student.

Mia: I would say a lot of the same things. Community is huge. I don’t think I would’ve made it through the year if I didn’t have people to rely on or people to have conversations with. And just to know that you’re not alone. People are having the same experiences, especially when you’re transitioning from high school to college. For me that included feeling like you don’t necessarily belong in the classroom just based on everyone else’s background. I am a first-generation, low- income student and I look at other people in the classroom and sometimes I think, “Do I really belong here?” Then I’ll talk to other people and it’s a very common experience to feel like that — it’s very normal. Knowing that you’re not alone makes it a lot better and helps you find ways to feel comfortable in this space.  The role of professors is huge. Before I came here, I’d never heard of a mental health day. I had a professor who said, “If you need a mental health day, you can just take it. You don’t have to email me or anything.” And I realized, wow, there’s a really big emphasis on who you are as a person outside of your academics. That is something that is sometimes really hard for me to separate because I’m a goal-oriented person. I will get through this task no matter what because I’m looking at a bigger picture. And sometimes that also can harm me because it can lead to burnout. Sometimes I have moments where I realize, “Wow, I’m definitely struggling.”

LW: What are some of the challenges to wellbeing and belonging here? How can things be improved? 

Prisha: I think I can give this a go. All of us need to better understand our different cultures and perspectives. I work at the Office of International Services and we do a bunch of these events throughout the year, some big, some small, all celebrating the different cultures that are present on our campus and give students, especially international students, a platform to celebrate their own cultures as well as to spread awareness. And something we always face is how can we get more students to come engage with us? I think a lot of international students feel the need to just disappear into the crowd of white Americans here on campus, and they feel a really strong need to conform.

“Considering how fast college goes by, you have to create your belonging quickly in four years.”

I think another way to cultivate a larger sense of belonging is how can we get white Americans or locals to also look at what we do? It’s like you see the email and right away, it’s not for me. And it’s just such a missed opportunity. If it was the other way around, if instead of putting the pressure on international students to fit in, we got all students to learn about all the different kinds of cultures we have here, it would benefit everyone. You would learn to be more tolerant, be more open. “Hey, this is what exists outside of this campus, outside of this state, this country, and this is what’s going on, and you should look at it.” That is something I’d like to change. 

Marissa: It can be tough here sometimes. Vassar is a PWI, predominantly white institution, and I think statistically the numbers of students of color are going up, but you could look out into the college center, into the dining hall, and it doesn’t feel that way. Oftentimes I hear people say, “This is a really small school. I feel like I know everybody.” And I think, “I don’t know everybody.” And I think that’s because even as extroverted as I am, there are different pools here, you have your cliques. Vassar is still just like any other school that way. And sometimes it can be hard to mesh those, even when we are all taught to be very multidisciplinary and interconnected. That’s why I rely on my peers to uphold one another. But sometimes it feels like if we don’t do it, nobody else is going to. And then we could fall through the cracks. Considering how fast college goes by, you have to create your belonging quickly in four years. And then you want to be able to not just make your own belonging, but to make spaces for other people like you to belong that are consistent, that are long lasting, that don’t disappear. 

Mia: I knew coming here it was going to be humbling. I knew the workload, the difference in material and curriculum was going to be huge for me. I came from a Title 1 school. It was not going to be the same. There’s always going to be something you don’t know. I think my biggest fear was also not having a community here. I was so scared I wasn’t going to make friends. I thought, “I’m going to be all alone. This is going to be so hard.” But I came in and I made friends the very first week, and they’re still my friends now. We’re eight months down the line and we have dinner every single night. You don’t realize how much people will impact you as you spend time here. So, I think you expect certain things and you just don’t know what it’s really going to be like until you get here. 

LW: You are all so inspiring and accomplished. I wonder, have you thought much about your purpose in life, which is different from just what you want to do. 

Maya: For me, personally, the desire to go into research, and specifically researching disorders like ALS, is because my dad was diagnosed with ALS and he passed away two years ago. (That’s the personal thing that I was struggling with.) So that was very embedded in me since his diagnosis. I understand the person suffering as well as how much suffering their family is going through and how much support they need during this time. And the fact that we have so many unanswered questions remaining despite all of the technological advancements that we have, seems like we need to really focus on certain aspects of these diseases to further our understanding and to further treatment and cures to these problems. I do think my experiences on campus, specifically talking with other people who are in my majors, who are also close friends, has further solidified my interest in research. I see the research that they’re doing with other professors on campus, or I see what they’re learning about and I’m like, oh, that’s really interesting. I want to learn about that, too. I would definitely say that finding my purpose in life has been facilitated throughout my time at Vassar. 

Marissa: I think, at least for me, my purpose — the thing that drives me — is to be happy. Because there was a period where I really wasn’t. And I look back at my younger self and I just want to give her a hug. But I look at her with grace and I look at the journey and I’m so grateful that I was able to go on it. And when I’m here, I think I also believe in the power of storytelling. And telling the stories, whether it be how it was back then or where I’m at now, it’s just being able to do that. And I think what college gave me was a toolbox for all that.

Last August, as Kent State University students were busy reconnecting with friends and settling into another year of college, professors John Gunstad and Karin Coifman were launching a research initiative that could improve their wellbeing and that of the thousands of students who come after them. The new Student Life Study is the largest and most ambitious investigation into the health and wellbeing of college students ever conducted. It will collect a high-dimensional data set on a group of 10,000 students and follow them throughout their lifetimes, providing real-time data on student mental and physical health. Gunstad and Coifman believe a study of this magnitude will eventually identify best-practice interventions, provide immediate access to health and wellness resources, re-structure university programming and decision-making, and even predict outcomes after graduation. 

“Our goal is to create a comprehensive understanding of what it’s like to be a modern-day college student in order to help them live happier and healthier lives,” said Dr. Gunstad. 

Longitudinal, population-scale research projects, like the Harvard Study of Adult Development, can provide a treasure trove of data as they follow individuals over the course of their lifetimes. But no studies of this scope and intensity have ever focused on college students. Dr. Karin Coifman is a clinical psychologist whose research focuses on following people over extended periods of time, particularly through stages of stress—including normative, developmental stressors like the transition into college. Dr. John Gunstad is a clinical neurologist interested in tracking changes in the brain over the course of a lifetime. Their combined expertise is now fully dedicated to helping improve the overall wellbeing of college students by looking at all the contributing factors – including mental and physical health, social belonging, academic and career success and equity and inclusion. 

An unmet need

The Student Life Study’s abstract states that “Current students represent a unique generation, the first raised entirely within the broader context of social media. Presently, U.S. colleges and universities do not have adequate resources to address this increased demand and existing surveillance and broad-scope interventional tools are limited. The Kent State Student Life Study (SLS) is designed to investigate complex and dynamical developmental shifts in psychological health and functioning in this generation of college students.” By understanding the unique social, cultural, and psychological challenges faced by these students, Dr. Coifman and Dr. Gunstad believe that universities can better accommodate their needs and support their development. 

A population-scale study of this magnitude and with this intensity of measurement has never been conducted on college students.

As Dr. Coifman explains, “college is a developmental period when the bad habits that drive many health concerns later in life are formed. There’s a shift that happens when kids leave home and come onto the college campus. They come with their history. They come with their risk. They come with their experiences and certainly patterns of behavior. But those things dynamically shift during the college years, and we don’t yet understand exactly how that occurs—which means we’re not very good at intervening.” 

Both Dr. Gunstad and Dr. Coifman speak passionately about the research methodology and the rigor of the study. The Student Life Study aims to gather data on a sample of 10,000 college students—not only while they are on campus, but after graduation and throughout their lives. The research methods range from surveys and video responses to physical health assessments, the combination of which is itself precedent setting. The model of the study involves both tracking behaviors and testing methods of intervention, discovering what works in real time. When something works, the researchers will make it available without delay—an intervention found to be effective will be available to all students and continuously refined. 

The process of data collection is equally rigorous, agile and ever evolving. “To capture developmental processes, you have to use a dynamic model for research,” Dr. Coifman says. “It’s often called a measurement burst framework, where you do these fits of intense measurement, and then you wait, and then you do them again, and then you wait and repeat. We’re doing that within a platform that’s really comfortable for this population. We rely on a lot of remote assessment, such as surveys delivered through the smartphone, as well as a process called ecological momentary assessment, a technique that allows researchers to observe behaviors and experiences in real time.”

In the Student Life Study, this assessment takes place during one week of each semester, when students will report their behaviors and experiences 5 times a day for a period of 7 days. “We’ve paired these periods of ecological momentary assessment with passive biosensing,” Dr. Coifman explains. This means hardware and software integration, pairing survey data with health data collected by a Garmin device such as a Fitbit or Apple watch. 

The study has “enormous scientific potential,” Dr. Coifman explains, in part due to the scope and methods of data collection. A population-scale study of this magnitude and with this intensity of measurement has never been conducted on college students. It allows the researchers to make better, more nuanced scientific inferences. “There are lots of population-scale studies following individuals over the course of their lifetimes, but the intensity of measurement is gathering data maybe once or twice a year. We are doing continuous, intensive sampling, and we’re also collecting biological data that other samples haven’t.” 

Phase 1 of the study began last fall and involves measuring the health, social behavior and academic performance of 10,000 college students during their time on campus. Phase 2 will follow these same students after graduation, studying how their physical health, mental and emotional wellbeing, social and professional lives play out over the course of their lifetimes. The researchers will use information gathered in both phases to identify predictors of successful outcomes, develop effective interventions for issues like substance abuse or mental health concerns, and understand how students’ college years affect the rest of their lives. 

The ultimate goal of the Student Life Study is to work with university administrators and decision-makers at Kent State and beyond to implement resources and best practices based on the findings of the study.

“We’re trying to capture all domains of operations,” Dr. Coifman says. “We are, of course, interested in psychological states, but we’re also interested in basic biological functions. We want to know how people are sleeping, how they’re eating, how they’re moving; what their social networks look like and how they experience social connection.” Additionally, the researchers will collect data on difficult experiences in students’ lives—as well as how they think about those experiences, and how different ways of thinking about difficult experiences affect life outcomes. At the end of every semester, students complete a survey detailing the primary stressors they encountered, as well as completing a video prompt where they discuss those sources of stress. They use the same method to record positive experiences and achievements. The video offers a platform for narrative response and, importantly, a window into the way students think. 

“Often what people say is much less useful for predicting outcomes than how they say it,” Dr. Coifman explains, adding that “subtle things, like how people use words or how the syntax moves in their phrasing” can help researchers glean qualitative information about how they are processing positive or negative events and emotions. Beneath the content of what students say, the psychology of how they feel about what they are saying opens another world of interpretation. 

With this ambitious undertaking comes a tremendous potential for meaningful change. The ultimate goal of the study is to work with university administrators and decision-makers at Kent State and beyond to implement resources and best practices based on the findings of the study. Dr. Gunstad emphasizes that helping universities reallocate their resources to better serve students in an important benefit. “Universities have limited funds for programming to help students succeed,” he says, noting that much of that funding is misallocated to interventions whose efficacy is unproven. “If we can help universities be smart about how they use those funds, we can create better outcomes for students.”

The Student Life Study is funded by a competitive “Game Changer” award sponsored by the Division of Research and Economic Development at Kent State University, which provides internal pilot funds to research projects at the university. When Phase 1 launched in August of 2023, the Student Life Study had amassed around $450,000 in funding to cover the first two years of the study. Dr. Coifman and Dr. Gunstad are grateful for the university’s investment into the program, and they agree that Kent State is the ideal setting for an initiative of this size, scope and potential outcome. 

With nearly 35,000 students across 8 campuses, the university’s geographic spread includes both rural and urban campuses in Ohio. Additionally, more than a third of Kent State students are first-generation college students, and a longitudinal study could have meaningful implications for that population of students. “These are individuals who are the first in their families to make their way into college,” Dr. Gunstad says. “Being able to capture information on that group is critically valuable to their development, and also valuable to us as a country and a society.” 

Dr. Gunstad also points out that past longitudinal and life course studies have typically looked at populations on the east and west coasts. Kent State’s midwestern location means that the study will fill in what past research has missed: “flyover country,” as Dr. Gunstad affectionately puts it. 

Additionally, Dr. Coifman emphasizes institutional support as a crucial element to the study’s success. “The potential of the study is in the commitment of this institution to this project. We are reaping the tremendous benefit of many institutional resources. I suspect that lots of institutions are very concerned with the fact that it’s incredibly hard to meet the needs of students today, and they simply have inadequate funding available to do it. The gap between the need and the resources is just getting wider and wider,” she says. Institutional investment into the Student Life Study may eventually mean that those limited resources can be reallocated to better serve students at colleges and universities across the country.

To learn more about the Kent State University Student Life Study, visit https://www.kent.edu/student-life-study. 

Around the turn of the century, psychiatrist Holly Rogers noticed an emerging trend among her student clients at Duke University. Many of them were coming into the student counseling center with a variety of mental health problems driven by what seemed to be a lack of resilience; an inability to sit with discomfort, distress or disappointment. She concluded that helping her students develop the coping skills needed to confront these emotions would lead to a myriad of benefits, including alleviating what would soon grow to be a capacity crisis at college counseling centers across the country. 

Nearly a quarter century later, Rogers’ professional observation has become a personal mandate to help address some of what today’s college students are struggling with – including anxiety, depression and loneliness. She is even more convinced today that practices such as mindfulness can help many college students regulate their own wellbeing in a world that has only become more stressful. She and her colleague, Libby Webb, the former associate director of counseling and psychological services at Duke, founded the Mindfulness Institute for Emerging Adults (MIEA) to bring the evidence-based program in contemplative practices developed at Duke to colleges and universities around the country.

“Something more has got to be done,” said Rogers, MD. “There needs to be a top-level paradigm shift to change the culture on our campuses so we don’t have academic success over here with all its metrics and then ‘here’s a few things we do for wellness.’”  

Rates of anxiety and depression reported by college students have been on the rise for more than a decade, and the responsibility of addressing the crisis has been largely laid at the door of college counseling centers. But capacity problems have coincided with a growing recognition that subclinical emotional issues can and should be addressed by opening up the circle of care on campus, and that combatting the college mental health crisis requires adding a preventative, public health approach, along with a treatment response. Enter mindfulness. 

“Mindfulness is the skill and capacity to bring our minds to the present as opposed to galloping towards the future or dwelling in the past,” said Webb, MSW. “And doing so with a non-judgmental awareness of where our minds tend to go. You just notice it and bring your attention back to the present.”

Mindfulness has become a big business, complete with YouTube channels and celebrity endorsements, and it is clear the practice can work for people of any age. But Rogers and Webb believe it is particularly beneficial for emerging adults: traditional college-age students who are navigating emotional land mines such as test anxiety, social media-induced self-doubt, and vulnerability to substance use. “What we know about this developmental stage is that it is filled with ambiguity,” said Webb. “‘Who am I? What do I care about? Who am I going to love?’ And we know that the brain doesn’t like ambiguity. It detects a threat, so it’s a time of high unease.” 

Webb says that because their brains are still fluid, young people are more adept at flexing into other patterned behaviors if exposed to them. Skills-based practices like mindfulness can calm their brains, which helps them make better choices, examine their purpose, and identify what is important to them. In 2023, the American Council on Education strongly endorsed mindfulness programs with supervised practice in its report, “What Works for Improving Mental Health in Higher Education,” adding to a strong body of evidence already in the literature.

“Research is showing us more and more that this capacity to be in the moment reduces suffering and improves attention,” said Webb.

For several years, Duke offered the program developed by Rogers and her colleague Margaret Maytan, MD, in the form of a four-week, opt-in course, involving a teacher and group discussion.  While it was slow to catch on, it eventually took on waiting lists. They called it Koru, a Maori word used for an unfurling fern frond symbolizing stability in the center of unfolding growth. With refinements to the curriculum over the years, they began an effort to assess its effectiveness in 2012. The results of its randomized controlled trial were published in the Journal of American College Health and became that publication’s most downloaded article in 2014, around the same time the Healthy Minds survey showed a solid upward trend in mental health problems among college students. In the trial, students who had taken Koru reported a reduction in stress, an increase in restfulness, and a greater sense of self-compassion, among other findings.  

Skills-based practices like mindfulness can calm their brains, which helps them make better choices, examine their purpose, and identify what is important to them.

Interest in practices like Koru on college campuses has grown steadily since then, motivating Rogers and Webb to leave their positions at Duke to focus full-time on expanding the program through a “train the trainer” model. Individuals from other universities began coming to the center, recently renamed MIEA, in Durham, NC, where they receive training to become MIEA-certified teachers and then go back to their campuses and offer the courses in a variety of forms. 

Since the pandemic, MIEA has offered the certification program online, which has accelerated the number of schools and individuals participating in the program. Rogers said that MIEA has now trained 1,500 teachers in 14 different countries and taught over 70,000 students. Institutions range from the Ivies to community colleges. You don’t have to have a clinical background to become a MIEA teacher, only some background in contemplative practices. If you don’t, they will help you cultivate one.  

MIEA’s first non-Duke client was Harvard University, which continues to offer a variety of classes each semester and has 12 MIEA-certified teachers within its Center for Wellness and Health Promotion. “I have been teaching MIEA classes for over 10 years,” said Amanda Ayers, MPH, Harvard’s Director of Health Promotion. “It is such a joy to see the changes that students make in just four weeks. They are able to be more present in their everyday lives, spend less time on social media, and are kinder to themselves.” 

How mindfulness practices are taught and who chooses to teach them illustrates their versatility and low barrier to access. In an environment as siloed as a college campus, mindfulness curriculum like that offered through MIEA can weave through departments and requirements – a credit-bearing course here, an elective there. Mindfulness teachers are often connected to traditional fields like health promotion but can include anyone in any discipline who sees the value of improving student wellbeing. Evidence on the connection between mindfulness and attention attracts professors and academic advisors worried about student disengagement and burnout.

“You can embed this curriculum into your first-year seminars, your physical education classes, or as an extra credit elective,” said Rogers. “We have faculty in business schools who are offering the curriculum in conjunction with their academic material.”

The individualized nature of the MIEA program is both an advantage and a challenge. The curriculum, which comes with an app and a teacher dashboard, takes different forms at different price points. To date, MIEA’s business model is to sell the program to individuals within schools such as faculty or staff working in the wellness center who might use professional development funds to pay for it. Rogers points out that this case-by-case model lacks the consistency and traction needed to make mindfulness a universal benefit. Professors get busy. Funds dry up. The team is now offering the MIEA program directly to institutions at a much larger scale, hoping the urgency of student mental health will spur a university-wide commitment to wellbeing.  

“We’re asking universities to make a commitment both to us and to their teachers if they want to really make a difference on their campus,” said Rogers.  

Mindfulness in Action

Eric Teske directs the Office of Health and Wellness Promotion at Indiana University, Indianapolis. His interest in the MIEA program came from his desire to “take pressure off of the counseling center” by offering a program that could be taught by trained teachers to students who could be helped in non-clinical contexts. After hearing a presentation by Libby Webb during the pandemic, Teske was determined to get a number of people on campus trained and certified through MIEA. Making it a free professional development opportunity was an added incentive. He funded the trainings through a grant from the state’s Division of Mental Health and Addiction.  

“In helping students understand their own thoughts and feelings, we are equipping them with self-regulatory skills, self-management, and that is all part of alcohol and drug prevention,” said Teske, MS, CHWC, who urges institutions in other states to explore the use of similar public funding.

The person who brought Libby Webb to IU was Nancy Barton, MS, a senior lecturer in the School of Health and Human Sciences’ Department of Kinesiology. With a background in meditation, Barton had been interested in becoming MIEA certified but didn’t find the time to pursue it until the pandemic,when the online option provided an opportunity — and even more students were reaching out for help. 

“Once I got it [the certification], I really wanted to work with my university to see it take off,” she said.  “So many people would say to me, ‘I am really worried about the mental health of my students, but I don’t know what to do.’ Now I could say,‘here’s something you can do.’”

Teske and Barton were part of the university’s Wellness Coalition, an ad hoc group of wellness enthusiasts who informally met to strategize about tactics to use on campus. Another member was Lisa Angermeier, PhD, MCHES, a senior faculty fellow in the Institute for Engaged Learning, which focuses on first-year experience and high impact practices. Together, they led an effort to embed the MIEA curriculum as a pilot program into selected sections of the first-year seminar. Now, the course is not just a credit-bearing option in the Department of Kinesiology, but a required course for first-year students.

“We wanted to offer students more tools, right from the beginning of their college experience to help them deal with the stress they will encounter,” said Angermeier. “But we also see this as something they can take with them and use for the rest of their lives.” 

An assessment of the program indicates that 62% of the first-year students found the program to be valuable. The team considers this statistic a positive outcome, considering that students do not opt-in to the program. Requiring mindfulness courses is a matter of debate among experts, with some saying it takes away from the self-agency of the practice, but Angermeierviews it as a way to plant a seed of self-care, even for those students who may be reluctant. Equity was another driver. 

“Oftentimes with opt-in programs, we see that the students that get there first come in with more social capital while those who lag behind lose out,” she said. “These are the students who often need it the most.”  

Valencia College in Orlando, Florida is also utilizing the MIEA curriculum. One of the largest, multi-campus community colleges in the country, Valencia is diverse, both in terms of its students and in the broad range of developmental stages in which they come to campus. Marcia Roman, EdD, ThM, is a counselor and faculty member at Valencia, where she and her colleagues do case management-type work, connecting students to clinicians when necessary and providing workshops and skills-based training. She said the MIEA curriculum “blended beautifully” with their model.  

“Our students can learn basic skills that you might even describe as mechanical – like how to breathe in a way that activates the parasympathetic nervous system, which will calm them down – but it’s more than that. For some, it has been life-changing. With mindfulness, they can move through the difficulty in their lives as opposed to all the manner of ways we try to bypass it. And they can do so without tremendous cost and with little risk.”  

The accessibility of mindfulness is one of its biggest selling points and something Rogers and Webb are promoting before potential higher education clients. Vivien Roman-Hampton, MSW, LICSW, is MIEA’s new Director of Outreach and Teacher Development. Part of her job is encouraging MIEA teachers to become trainers with a particular focus on bringing in people with diverse backgrounds.  

Roman-Hampton believes that when colleges and universities offer these services to students of all backgrounds and abilities, it says to them, “We see you and we want to support you.”

“My focus is on ensuring that the practices are accessible to anyone who isn’t what we would call ‘mainstream,’” she said.

Her interest in MIEA is personal. A clinician who works with clients from marginalized communities and is from one herself, Roman-Hampton was drawn to MIEA’s work because of its low cost and long-term benefit. “So much about self-care costs money, and that becomes a barrier to people,” she said. But Roman-Hampton initially questioned the lack of diversity among the training staff, which she said would be an issue for her clients. When she expressed her concern to Rogers and Webb, they encouraged her to help diversify the practice, and she joined them officially two years ago.    

Roman-Hampton believes that when colleges and universities offer these services to students of all backgrounds and abilities, it says to students, “We see you and we want to support you.”

Asked if mindfulness programs offer a particular benefit for marginalized groups, she said, “I think the practice allows us to sit with things that might be really difficult — like how the world sees us versus how we really are. And while we can most definitely work to create change, it is also exhausting, and not everyone will change as a result. But that doesn’t mean we have to keep absorbing it the way we have historically. Mindfulness is a way to sit with suffering but not let it destroy you.”

Listen to this story:

When Joey left his hometown to attend a prestigious out-of-state university, his mother was in hospice care for a rare sarcoma, a terminal cancer affecting the body’s soft tissues and bones. Two weeks into his freshman year, her nurses warned the family that Joey’s mother was in the final days of her life. Joey returned home, and his mother died the next day.

Joey’s mom had encouraged him to go to college, find community, and engage academically and socially with his campus. In the wake of her death, he no longer knew what that looked like. Joey went back to school one week after losing his mother, uncertain of his options and fearing the academic consequences of missing classes. When he emailed a dean at his university to explain his weeklong absence, an administrative assistant wrote back, asking Joey to provide a copy of his mother’s obituary.

“I didn’t want to dig myself into a deep hole in my first semester,” Joey says. “My university didn’t really know what to do with me, so I went back after a week. That’s when things really started to go downhill.” He describes feeling “indirectly rushed” to return to campus, having no knowledge of the university’s academic accommodations or leave policies. No one from his university’s administration reached out to make Joey aware of his options for support in or out of the classroom. He did not know until his second semester, after months of depression and isolation had taken a toll on his transcript, that he could have been graded on a Pass/Fail basis, allowing him to proceed with a clean slate. 

“My grades were very poor,” he recalls. “I had no study habits whatsoever. Seeing my GPA, seeing that it didn’t reflect the kind of student I am, it just made me more depressed. And then socially, it also took a huge toll. I was living in my dorm room most of the time.” Watching his grades drop over the course of his first semester, Joey says, compounded the cycle of anxiety, overwhelm, and pain—but what choice did he have? Without clarity on his university’s policies on grief and bereavement, Joey believed his only option was to keep going, soldiering on through the daily slog of academia, held to the same standard as his peers.

Death is a sensitive subject even for family and close friends, often leaving us at a loss for words, choosing to say nothing for fear of saying the wrong thing—so how should a college or university respond when a student loses a loved one? That question, at once ethical and practical, is the driving force behind UGrieve, a new initiative by the Parmenter Foundation designed to help colleges support students as they navigate the loss of a loved one while balancing academic and social commitments at a time when they may be living away from home for the first time. 

Established in 1949 as a provider of medical care in MetroWest Massachusetts, the Parmenter Foundation offers end-of-life and bereavement programs, resources and education, as well as grant funding for other nonprofits that provide services such as grief support groups for all ages, guidance for educators, and hospice care. The foundation launched UGrieve with interviews of three college students who describe feeling isolated, disoriented, and unsupported while grieving on campus.

“Our understanding, based on anecdotes from bereaved students, parents, and also counselors and administrators, is that higher education institutions do not have systems, policies or protocols in place to support students who have experienced a death in their family,” says Angela Crocker, Executive Director of the Parmenter Foundation. “It seems colleges and universities can be accommodating to students who are grieving, but only if the students know what to ask for and whom to ask.” 

The confusion and ambiguity that accompanies students reentering campus life after losing a loved one is an additional stressor for grieving families. “We’ve talked to moms who have lost a husband who say, ‘I’m grieving. I’m in shock. And then my son needs to go back to school, and I feel like I’m sending him into a black hole, and nobody’s looking out for him,’” says Jennifer Siegal, Communications and Programs Manager at the Parmenter Foundation.

The fear of sending a student back into a “black hole” of grief and bereavement protocol is far from unfounded, as Joey’s experience lays bare. Colleges tend to be pro-active only when a death (usually of a student) occurs on campus, assuming that what happens at home falls outside their institutional responsibility. As a result, according to Crocker, bereaved students are not only emotionally gutted, but often left feeling pulled between family and school obligations. 

“Colleges and universities can be accommodating to students who are grieving, but only if the students know what to ask for and whom to ask.” 

Joey’s older sister was their mother’s primary caretaker while their dad worked, he says. She made the preemptive decision to take the entire fall semester off from school, because she did not know when her mother would pass away. Joey describes feeling torn, longing to be at home to grieve with his loved ones but fearing falling behind in his academics. He reminded himself that his mother had encouraged him to make friends and “make his mark” on campus, something that seemed impossible as he struggled just to stay afloat.

“When college students have to confront the loss of a family member, they are immediately pulled between their two worlds of school and family life,” said Crocker, who noted the chasm is even wider for international students. “This pull is aggravated by geographic factors, multi-faceted academic demands, and oftentimes by the uncertain timeline at the end of their loved one’s life. No one is prepared for this. Colleges and universities need to understand this painful dynamic and provide balance and support—not demands—to students who are grieving.” 

Another barrier is the disconnect around bereavement and mental health support on campus. Siegal and Crocker emphasize that bereavement is a component of mental health, yet as colleges have increased cultural awareness and attention to mental health, grief and bereavement have been largely excluded from the conversation—despite the fact that the death of a loved one is correlated with a higher risk of depression, anxiety, post-traumatic stress disorder, and compromised physical health due to chronic stress.

How to Help

Colleges and universities do recognize the need. According to Siegal, administrators and decision-makers in higher education have expressed uncertainty surrounding best practices—they, too, operate in the dark, without a clear, universal protocol for students. “We saw that there was a demand for support in this area,” Siegal says, “so we started to put a program and initiative together. We interviewed students and created the video just so people could see that there really is a case for this work, and data show there are hundreds of thousands of students losing a loved one each year. This is not a small problem.”

“When college students have to confront the loss of a family member, they are immediately pulled between their two worlds of school and family life. Colleges and universities need to understand this painful dynamic and provide balance and support—not demands—to students who are grieving.”

The UGrieve program provides data and information about bereavement and makes recommendations to colleges on how to “build compassionate campuses” through policy changes. The UGrieve program urges colleges and universities to implement a “point person” to inform students of their options, communicate with professors, and coordinate accommodations as needed. The point person, she says, would ensure that grieving students will not be forced to make hurried decisions about their academic futures without full knowledge of the school’s policies and the resources available to them. “College students who have suffered a loss experience a sense of grief and isolation that inhibits them from navigating their classwork, effectively communicating with professors and accessing even the resources that are readily available on campus,” says Crocker. “Colleges and universities can overcome this disconnect by assigning a single point of contact to guide a grieving student on every accommodation available to them.”

Additionally, Siegal says, universities can implement training programs for faculty, staff, and students to make it easier for them to approach conversations with people who have lost loved ones. “It can be awkward,” Siegal acknowledges. “If someone brings up the death of a loved one, a roommate or professor won’t always know what to say.” Trainings and educational resources, she says, can create a grief-ready campus. The UGrieve mission is to “build compassionate campuses” where bereaved students are not neglected as they struggle to navigate classwork and social lives in a time of grief. On a compassionate campus, faculty will be better prepared to accommodate students who lose a parent, caregiver, or sibling. Bereaved students will have a point person to direct them to campus resources. Roommates and friends will be better equipped to recognize signs of isolation and depression.

UGrieve suggests that the first step to creating compassionate and informed campuses is to include grief and bereavement in conversations about mental health, including legal conversations. In 2023, several U.S. senators, including Massachusetts’ Edward Markey, introduced the Student Mental Health Rights Act, which would require the Department of Education to issue guidance to institutions of higher education to ensure compliance with federal law on mental health disabilities. But for some students, there is a glaring gap in the legislation: “It mandates colleges to provide accommodations for students who have anxiety, depression, substance use disorder, and they don’t include bereavement,” says Siegal. “So we’re working to compel them to include bereavement in the legislation. The accommodations they are proposing for supporting students with mental health struggles are very similar to what we are recommending for students who are grieving.”

With advocacy and hands-on resources, the Parmenter Foundation hopes all colleges and universities will examine the strength of their bereavement programs and consider them an important part of creating compassionate campuses.

After his mother was diagnosed with cancer, Joey says, “She fought till the very end. She wasn’t willing to give up or back down without a fight. It’s still a huge inspiration. When I’m thinking about giving up, or when I’m at my lowest point, I always think: What would my mom say? What would my mom do?”

When Joey returned to school for the second semester of his freshman year, he arranged a meeting with the dean of students and the dean of the business school. He described his experience, telling them that it was the experience of many students who were suffering in silence, not knowing where to turn for help. He says the deans listened: they wanted to do better. They listened to a student who had felt neglected, left to fend for himself—and they took his suggestions seriously, proposing new protocols for grief support with the goal of making campus resources clear and accessible to all students.

Now a finance major with a minor in economics, Joey has cultivated a sense of belonging and hope on campus, living a life beyond his dorm room. “I don’t hate this school,” he says. “I love being here. It’s a great fit for me. I just wanted to make it better.” He has worked with UGrieve to build a compassionate campus for future students, who he says he hopes “will be treated the exact opposite” of how he was. For Joey, a compassionate campus is one where students can spend time at home to grieve with their families, knowing that they will be accommodated and welcomed back to campus; where students know who to reach out to and where to go for help; where professors have built-in procedures to grant extensions and forgive missed work when a student loses a family member or caregiver. And a place where an administrator will be less likely to ask a student for his mother’s obituary as proof of death.

To learn more about UGrieve, visit https://parmenterfoundation.org/ugrieve/.