Category: Mental Health

Addressing the rising prevalence of mental health issues, particularly among young people

A Collective Endeavor

Posted on by Dana Humphrey

In the liberal arts, small student populations, intimate learning environments, and dedicated faculty and staff create pathways for students to develop a sense of purpose, belonging, and identity on campus — pillars of wellbeing that will sustain them long after commencement day. Amid a youth mental health crisis with young adults reporting that their lives lack purpose, the liberal arts mission of whole-person development has never been more vital. For twelve small colleges across the United States, that mission has become a collective venture thanks to a $3.275 million grant from the Endeavor Foundation. “Collective challenges require collective solutions,” says Warren Wilson College President Damián Fernández. “The Endeavor Foundation’s collaborative approach to addressing student mental health and wellness—one of the pervasive issues of our times—promises broader and deeper impact.” 

The Endeavor Lab Colleges (ELCs) are a consortium of 12 small liberal arts colleges across the United States who share a commitment to student mental health, experiential learning, civic engagement, and purposeful work. Working across their campuses as a cohesive ecosystem, the collaborative has been supported by the Endeavor Foundation in New York City since 2016. In 2023, the ELCs — Antioch College in Yellow Springs, OH; Bennington College in Bennington, VT; Blackburn College in Carlinville, IL; College of the Atlantic in Bar Harbor, ME; Northland College in Ashland, WI; Prescott College in Prescott, AZ; Randolph College in Lynchburg, VA; St. John’s College in Annapolis, MD; St. John’s College in Santa Fe, NM; Sterling College in Craftsbury, VT; Unity Environmental University in New Gloucester, ME; and Warren Wilson College in Asheville, NC — received the $3.275 million grant to fund the first phase of their collaborative project, “Enhancing Student Learning and Experience through Campus Wellness, Student Well-Being, and Mental Health Initiatives.”

Capacity to care

Phase I of the Endeavor Mental Health Initiative, which will continue to unfold over the course of the 2024-2025 academic year, focuses on building capacity — on the individual ELC campuses and across the “collaborative school” — for shared pilot projects within four categories: curricular initiatives to promote mental health and wellbeing in the classroom; purposeful life and work; place-based experiential learning; and expanded services, which include clinical and non-clinical mental health interventions such as peer mentoring, faculty and staff trainings, and bringing 24/7 counseling services to campus.

The colleges each received $100,000 for capacity-building in the 2023-2024 academic year and will receive an additional $75,000 to continue their efforts in the upcoming academic year. Also during Phase I, the Endeavor Lab Colleges will convene on progress and implementation, share expertise, and deepen their inter-institutional collaboration. With successful completion of this phase, the colleges will earn access to an additional $5.225 million over three years. Together, they will design and implement mental health and wellbeing that can be shared and adapted across the collective and become self-sustaining.

Dr. Lori Collins-Hall is the project manager for the Endeavor Foundation Mental Health Initiative. She also serves as vice president and chief operating officer of Sterling College, a liberal arts college in rural Craftsbury, Vermont and member of the Endeavor Lab Colleges. Prior to her work with the Endeavor initiative, Collins-Hall spent 20 years as a professor of sociology at Hartwick College in upstate New York, where her teaching and scholarship focused on criminal justice reform, alternatives to incarceration, and victim advocacy. She then served for five years as the provost and vice president of academic affairs at Antioch College in Ohio (also a member of the Endeavor Lab), before coming to Sterling in 2021. 

“Collective challenges require collective solutions. The Endeavor Foundation’s collaborative approach to addressing student mental health and wellness—one of the pervasive issues of our times—promises broader and deeper impact.”

From the first leg of her career at Hartwick College to her work with the Endeavor Foundation nearly 30 years later, Collins-Hall has been dedicated to community-based service work, exploring the transformative potential of the liberal arts model and place-based learning at institutions that value experiential education.  Both Antioch and Sterling (as well as Blackburn College and Warren Wilson College, also Endeavor Lab institutions), are among the ten federally-recognized work colleges that compose the Work College Consortium. These small colleges share a commitment to place-based education, community engagement and service, integrating work into the learning experience. 

Collins-Hall describes the Mental Health Project as a “capstone” to a career dedicated to cultivating pathways for student success in the liberal arts. For her, mental health care and the liberal arts share a common goal of whole-person development: “Within the liberal arts framework,” Collins-Hall says, “health and wellness becomes another avenue for being a whole person.” Whole-person development encompasses critical thinking, social engagement, and a sense of community —ideas we often associate with higher education and, more broadly, with the experience of “becoming” oneself — but it also includes self-care, self-reflection, and understanding one’s own behaviors within a larger social context. At their core, Collins-Hall explains, the Endeavor Lab Colleges have joined as a united front to develop methods “to integrate mental health and wellness as an acceptable and central piece of the liberal arts’ mission toward becoming a holistic person.”

The big impact of a small college

While the Endeavor Lab Colleges vary somewhat in size — most have fewer than 1,000 students; Sterling College has fewer than 100 — they all fit within the “small liberal arts college” or “micro college” designations. Institutions of their size and scope provide intimate learning environments, community engagement, and social belonging. For students, this kind of college environment can be an opportunity to establish a strong sense of self and place. As Collins-Hall describes, “These small colleges are community-oriented. They are student-focused,” and, importantly, she says, “they tend to be very relational, so people feel the impact when their communities are healthy — and they feel the impact when they’re not, perhaps more immensely, more directly.”

Among the most significant offerings of a small college environment is the development of students’ sense of purpose. Though purposeful work and learning have been shown to promote wellbeing and life satisfaction throughout a person’s lifetime, a 2022 Harvard University study of teens and young adults found that a striking 58 percent of respondents reported feeling little to no purpose or meaning. By prioritizing purpose, one of the four project areas of the Endeavor Lab Colleges, a liberal arts education can set students up for wellbeing in their post-graduate lives.

But these small institutions are not without challenges. As undergraduate enrollment falls, Americans’ trust in higher education continues to falter, and colleges now close at a rate of one per week, higher education has reached an inflection point — and perhaps no institution feels the weight of change as acutely as the small liberal arts college. While the endowments of larger universities may insulate them somewhat from cultural and financial pressures, those same pressures can be lethal for small colleges. Wells College in Aurora, NY was originally the thirteenth member of the Endeavor Lab Colleges; in April, it abruptly announced its closure after 156 years. (The shutdown and its fallout were the subject of a deep-dive by The Hechinger Report.)

Through a consortial approach, the Endeavor Mental Health Initiative preserves the immense value that the small liberal arts colleges provide their students while mitigating the budgetary challenges to creating and sustaining new programs. These are, as Collins-Hall describes, “some of the smallest, leanest, least financially resourced institutions.” 

Joining forces on mental health and wellbeing amplifies what each institution is able to accomplish on its own. “The support of the Endeavor Foundation and participation in the collaborative is vital to our small, private school as we strive to provide the best possible educational experiences to our students,” says Randolph College President Sue Ott Rowlands. “Our Endeavor Foundation grant funding has made it possible for us to enhance services to our students.”

While the endowments of larger universities may insulate them somewhat from cultural and financial pressures, those same pressures can be lethal for small liberal arts colleges.

Dr. Matt Vosler is a professor of outdoor leadership at Warren Wilson College. Vosler grew up in rural Western Ohio, where the outdoors were an integral part of his life — so integral, in fact, that he did not realize their impact until college, when his priorities shifted and experiences in nature became scarce. During his undergraduate studies at Ohio University, Vosler found himself spending less time outside— and feeling less fulfilled — than ever before. 

“Growing up in a rural area, being outdoors had always been a part of my daily routine. Then, suddenly, it wasn’t, and I was suffering.” At this realization, Vosler abandoned the pre-medical track he was on and went on to earn a degree in recreation, or, as he affectionately put it, “the study of play.” While pursuing a master’s degree in experiential education at Minnesota State University Mankato, he studied the traditional K-12 schooling system and the history of education reform in the U.S., leading to a revelation about the structure of education and the kinds of learners it is designed to serve. “When I left my K-12 education, I thought I wasn’t a good learner,” Vosler reflects. He experienced hyperactivity and ADHD as a child, and the traditional educational model was at odds with his style of learning. Upon discovering experiential education as an adult, Vosler thought of the many learners, including himself, who could benefit from the hands-on approach. He earned his PhD in curriculum and instruction, specializing in the transformative potential of outdoor education. 

Today, Vosler points out, students entering college had their middle school and high school years interrupted by the pandemic, spending formative developmental years online. Connection with nature supports attention restoration and stress reduction, but for a generation of college students that is less social and spends less time outdoors than its predecessors, the power of nature as a space for holistic wellbeing has eluded many. In his role at Warren Wilson, Vosler is devoted to exploring the connection between mental health and experiential learning in non-traditional classroom spaces. Nature Rx is a program that joins traditional mental health supports, such as counseling and clinical services, with the use of nature as a powerful supplementary tool for wellbeing. The mission, Vosler says, is to “empower students to cultivate relationships to nature, to others, and to themselves, creating sanctuary within the chaos of the modern college experience.” In a time when “hustle culture,” careerism, and pursuit of high-paying jobs are a proven detriment to college students’ sense of purpose, that sanctuary is worth protecting.

“At a small college, our capacity gets stretched. With the Endeavor grant, we were able to hit the ground running,” Vosler says. “We can grow and sustain our outdoor programs, ensuring that mental health and wellbeing remain an institutional priority.”

At Randolph College in Lynchburg, VA, Dean of Students Chris Lemasters is spearheading the Endeavor Lab’s expanded services initiative. With a background in residential life, Lemasters embodies the community-oriented approach to wellbeing that the liberal arts model encourages. “In the 2024-2025 academic year and beyond,” Lemasters says, “we have an opportunity to bring new and comprehensive mental health resources to expand the scope of our services and consistently keep mental health on the radar.” This expansion will go beyond acute care, such as mental health first aid, by prioritizing wellbeing across all areas of student life.

With an undergraduate population of just under 500 students, Randolph’s faculty promotes experiential and student-centered learning opportunities. Last year, Professor of Religious Studies Suzanne Bessenger and her colleagues built a contemplative studies minor into the Randolph curriculum, after a course taught by Bessenger proved meaningful for students. The contemplative studies field illuminates the human psychological experience through philosophical inquiry, deepening students’ exploration of self while encouraging intercultural exchange of ideas.

At Bennington College, Italian studies professor and First-Year Forum Director Dr. Barbara Alfano is exploring curricular opportunities such as trauma-informed learning to integrate wellbeing into the classroom within the first year of college. The First-Year Forum is a year-long advising course designed to help first-year students navigate campus resources, engage with their community, explore their interests, and develop their writing and critical thinking skills. As director of the First-Year Forum, Alfano thinks a lot about how the first year shapes the college experience. Her work within the Endeavor Lab focuses on integrating wellbeing into the liberal arts curriculum through developing shared curricular and co-curricular learning modules. 

Meanwhile in the Midwest, Blackburn College in Carlinville, IL conducted a Mental Health Needs Assessment to identify the status of student wellbeing on campus and helped college leaders locate areas for improvement. Now, the survey will expand from Blackburn into a multi-institution survey that will help all twelve Endeavor Lab institutions collect data on life experience, mental health, sense of belonging, and self-care behaviors among their students, creating a collective database for tracking and supporting mental health and wellness across the ELCs. 

In Bar Harbor, ME, College of the Atlantic Community Engagement Coordinator Nick Jenei is constructing campus maps to foster a sense of place and deepen students’ connections to their campus, local communities, and the cultural and natural history in their midst. Using interactive digital maps, the initiative leverages mobile phone technology to promote real-world engagement and will be adapted to create a sense of place and connection on other Endeavor campuses. Being connected to one’s physical place — its people, history, and environment — has shown positive effects on human health, improving both emotional wellbeing and academic performance in college. 

Together, the Endeavor Lab Colleges are not only enacting change on their own campuses, but tapping into the growing pool of knowledge they have built together. Their models for mental health and wellness are scaled and adapted to reach across the collaborative school of the Endeavor campuses. “These initiatives will support thousands of students on the members’ campuses but reach far beyond,” President Fernández says. “The work will have a multiplier effect through the creation of a model for all colleges and universities to implement refined best practices for student mental health and wellness.”

This Is Us

Posted on by Dana Humphrey

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.

The Jed Foundation/SHEEO Mental Health and Equity Initiative

Posted on by Dana Humphrey

In 2023, the State Higher Education Executive Officers Association (SHEEO) and The Jed Foundation (JED) launched a learning community across state higher education agencies and systems  to better support college student mental health and determinants such as equity and belonging. In late April, SHEEO and JED will host a convening in Minneapolis, “The Wellness Blueprint: Cultivating Foundations for Statewide Student Mental Health Policy,” with the purpose of continuing the development and implementation of state- and system-wide policy recommendations to advance student mental health and wellness. The hope is after a year-long collaboration, states will have moved the needle on a problem that lies at the intersection of each organization’s area of advocacy and expertise: mental health challenges remain the number one reason students stop out or consider stopping out of their post-secondary programs.

Dr. John Lane is the Vice President for Academic Affairs and Equity Initiatives at SHEEO, where he leads policy and project development in educational equity, academic programs, and student success. SHEEO works with state higher education officers to promote equitable higher education attainment for all Americans. 

“Whether these challenges are crisis circumstances or are accumulated over time and hidden, students identify mental health as the primary challenge to their academic persistence and achievement,” says Lane. The issue is exacerbated for low-income students, many of whom will never return to school, and are often laden with debt and the result is no degree to show for it.  

Last year, states submitted grant proposals detailing their plans and commitments to mental health as a facet of equity in higher education, as well as their efforts to engage internal stakeholders, such as a state Department of Public Health. Five states — Arizona, Louisiana, Oregon, Pennsylvania, and Texas — were selected to receive $25,000 grants to support their work to implement mental health solutions tailored to their unique contexts over a 15-month period. The objective of the partnership was to provide states with the resources to explore how mental health and equity are being addressed and to share their findings through cross-state collaboration. 

The Jed Foundation brings decades of research and expertise in suicide prevention and student mental health to the table. It is also another example of an expanding focus for the non-profit, which has recently added a public affairs and advocacy component to its work with colleges and high schools.  The JED Equitable Implementation Framework and the JED Campus Program will be used to guide state policymakers in creating a space for states to identify best practices, refine strategies, and work toward inter-state collaboration. The Jed Foundation has a longstanding precedent of centering student mental health as an academic issue, making its partnership with SHEEO an opportunity for the organizations to implement robust, research-supported policy change, study best practices as tailored to states’ unique resources and needs, and improve student outcomes by working directly with policymakers. 

“There is no rulebook right now for investing in student mental health at the state level. We are building as we climb.”

Dr. Zainab Okolo is the Senior Vice President of Policy, Advocacy, and Government Relations at the Jed Foundation. Okolo says the mission of the learning community is to help guide state systems in centering mental health in state and federal policy. “What we found at JED was a gap and an opportunity,” she says. “In response to the mental health crisis that was exacerbated during the pandemic, we saw many state-level leaders begin to directly invest in mental health. Governors had clear new line items around mental health — but there wasn’t any guidance on how to actually move the needle on mental health, or whether or not the investments being made at the state level were answering the questions around how we destigmatize mental health, how we expand resources, and how we ensure that students, particularly within school settings, are having their mental health needs met so they can continue to thrive as they pursue their degrees.” In having conversations with their partners at SHEEO, an imperative emerged to ensure that state policymakers had the means to support the work that they were already investing in. The priority was there, Okolo says, but procedural clarity wasn’t: “There is no rulebook right now for investing in student mental health at the state level. We are building as we climb.”

A Just Design

The mental health learning community comes at a time when mental health is a steadfast feature of public discourse and a topic of conversation on the federal stage. “There is a great opportunity here to take advantage of the attention that is being rightly paid to this work, as recently as the President’s State of the Union address,” says Lane.“We are so fortunate to do this work now; we have the Surgeon General whose platform is mental health, and the Secretary of Education who cares about the wellbeing and mental health of college students, and wants to know how to best sustain support for students and for systems that are supporting them.” 

According to Okolo, bringing states together on these issues highlights the similarities of their positions even as they navigate different political landscapes. “They’re all grappling with very similar questions. How do you scale crisis response? What specific policy levers need to be in place in order to continue this work, even beyond this kind of mental health Renaissance moment? How do we flag for our federal stakeholders and leaders that we need harder lines of funding to continue on even beyond these next couple of years? The learning community creates a space for states to collaborate and learn from each other.”

The five states selected for the learning community project — Texas, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Arizona, and Louisiana — represent a diverse range of education policy, resources, and student demographics. “We were deliberate about the variety of states,” says Lane. “The topography of the states is representative of a deeper conversation about how we tailor our work to the unique circumstances of each state. The political landscape varies greatly across these five states. So does the availability of resources, the governance model and the engagement profile. So, states work really hard to build consensus among their stakeholders, and regardless of the model, try to provide direction to help set important way points.”

Texas is one of several U.S. states to implement changes to its diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) policies within the last year. Senate Bill 17 banned all DEI programming from public colleges and universities in the state, creating  potential mental health risks for students who relied on affinity groups and identity-based spaces to cultivate a sense of inclusion and belonging on campus. These changes to DEI policies went into effect after the launch of the learning community, Okolo points out, and only reinforce the importance of adaptability and community engagement. When mental health initiatives find themselves in the crosshairs of fraught political divides, they reveal a unique area of bipartisanship. 

“The interesting thing about working within these political contexts is that this work remains bipartisan,” Okolo explains. “We see clarity around the importance of mental health echoed across states. What’s not bipartisan is the approach to issues around parental access, data, and funding. So the approach is not bipartisan, but the issue and the framing of the issue remains undoubtedly bipartisan. We want to keep it that way and lean into that opportunity by learning about how to do this work no matter the political ground that we find ourselves in.”

The public spirit, Lane and Okolo say, has not changed even where laws have. DEI “is directly adjacent to our mental health work, and it influences the scope of our reach when it comes to identifying needs based on race,” says Okolo. “What I’m happy to see, though, is that Texas made a commitment to making mental health resources accessible to all. What the ban might mean is that the language, how we frame it, what we call it, may change. But it doesn’t change the intent of the work.”

The mental health learning community leans into designing equitable futures within the contexts of each state. This, Lane says, calls for new approaches to address the systemic biases and inequity that are known contributors to the lack of access to mental health supports and can therefore serve as deterrents to student success and degree attainment. As a result, new projects at SHEEO include more dialogue about “just design.” According to Lane, “If you know pre-existing structures, and best efforts in the past have resulted in the need for current work and equity to try to mitigate disparities, then, if we have new solutions without addressing those original systemic circumstances, we could accidentally perpetuate the disparities that equity efforts are meant to close.” 

“The topography of the states is representative of a deeper conversation about how we tailor our work to the unique circumstances of each state. The political landscape varies greatly across these five states. So does the availability of resources, the governance model and the engagement profile.”

In order to address systemic discrimination and avoid repeating previously unsuccessful — and potentially harmful — initiatives, Lane says states must raise questions about designing systems and environments. A just design, he says, is one that centers community engagement, student voices, and adaptability to different states and institutions. The SHEEO/JED collaboration is currently building a student panel to foreground the student experience in policy reform. The goal is to not only amplify student voices, but to give students a seat at the table of changemaking. 

“Our goal to center student voices goes beyond the traditional model, which often includes bringing on students who share a narrative in the first-person,” Lane says. “My feeling is that too often we resume the policy work without taking an important next step, and that next step is giving students a sense of agency so that they are at the table with us as thought partners and are mentored in collaborating around policy in a way that helps us in the present, that gives them development opportunities for the future and really enriches the work that we’re doing.”

Lane and Okolo are looking forward to the late April conference to collectively assess how much has been accomplished and to provide a best practices guide. “What we are hoping to achieve with the best practices guide is a bit of a north star and a guardrail context on what to consider when implementing and scaling mental health work within your state,” Okolo says. “What are the blind spots? Who are the unsung heroes and key stakeholders that should be at the table when making these decisions? What opportunities do you have to triage off campus? What community-based organizations do you have at your fingertips to close the gap between resources on your campus and ensuring that students get the support that they need? Those kinds of strategic levers are what we hope to outline, so that if the state never engages with us directly, they have a way of navigating this work within their state context.”

New survey shows stop-out rates remain steady; emotional stress, mental health are main drivers

Posted on by Dana Humphrey

A new survey report from the Lumina Foundation-Gallup State of Higher Education study shows that the number of students considering leaving their post-secondary positions has remained about the same as last year and that emotional stress and personal mental health continue to top the list of drivers, just ahead of cost. The survey also showed that Black and Hispanic students are more likely than their White peers to report they have considered leaving school (Hispanic (42%) and Black (40%) compared to White (31%)). 

Stephanie Marken, the senior partner of Gallup’s education division and author of the report, says the findings within the more than 14,000-person survey are particularly instructive for colleges and universities keeping a watchful eye on both overall retention and efforts to increase enrollment for underrepresented groups.

“One of the most interesting findings from my perspective is that people are about as likely as they were last year to consider stopping out in general, about 1 in 3,” said Marken, referring to data in the 2023 Lumina-Gallup survey.  The report notes that postsecondary enrollment, although up slightly due to increases for community college and short-term credential programs, have been steadily declining for the past four years. The fact that the number of those considering stopping out has also remained steady, indicates initial losses due to the pandemic may be more of a trend than a disruption.   

“This is alarming on a number of levels,” said Marken. “We know that from a social mobility perspective, from an economic perspective, people who complete a college degree are far more likely to be thriving in their lives. Whether it’s their career, their financial future, or their general wellbeing. The group that is even more disadvantaged is the “some college, no degree” cohort (those who stop out and never come back) who have huge amounts of student loans and nothing to show for it.” 

The report finds that consideration (of leaving) among Blacks and Hispanics has improved slightly but is still higher than among their White peers.  Marken sees the losses among this group as even more problematic when considering the outsized gain disadvantaged groups, including women, receive from a college degree.  

“We know that from a social mobility perspective, from an economic perspective, people who complete a college degree are far more likely to be thriving in their lives.“

“When we think about people who have been historically marginalized in our workplaces, in our communities, in our institutions, as Black and Hispanic individuals have been, we see that the lift those individuals experience is significant when it comes to receiving a college education,” she said.  “They enter the workplace in a very different situation from a pay perspective, even more so than their white peers.”  

Marken says the consistency among all racial/ethnic groups about the primary reasons for considering leaving school (emotional stress, mental health) is particularly concerning. 

“The fact that emotional stress and personal mental health are universal reasons (for consideration of leaving) and have remained as high as they are is a good reminder that all students are struggling and the core foundational need to stay enrolled is to have a strong sense of wellbeing,” she said. “We know that for Black and Hispanic students, because more of them are considering stopping out, it’s a really high need within those communities.”  

The recent survey is the latest in a series within the Lumina Foundation-Gallup State of Higher Education study.  Begun in 2020, the research first looked at the learning experiences of enrolled students amidst the pandemic but expanded to include non-enrolled individuals or those who have left college in an effort to understand what drove them to opt-out or stop out.  Marken says learning more about these dynamics will help colleges and universities better understand how to get them back. 

“This is a good reminder that the core foundational need to stay enrolled is to have a strong sense of wellbeing.”

The latest report surveyed 6,015 currently enrolled students, about 5,012 Us adults who were previously enrolled in an education program after high school but had not completed a degree, and 3,005 adults who never enrolled in higher education.  The survey showed that about six in 10 Black and Hispanic unenrolled U.S. adults report they have considered enrolling in the past two years and that Certificate and Associate programs are most attractive to Black and Hispanic Americans.  

Marken sees this as good news and tracks it to 2019 Gallup research that showed that 66% of Hispanics and 65% of Blacks said that a college education was very important compared to just 44% of Whites.  

“All of this research is really aimed at figuring out how do we keep more of these individuals within higher education – those who want to be in higher ed and who perceive it to be a highly valuable experience — so they don’t stop out temporarily or permanently.”

Filling the Research Gap on Student Health and Wellbeing

Posted on by Dana Humphrey

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. 

Mindfulness: Coming to a College Near You

Posted on by Dana Humphrey

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. 

Holly Rogers, MD
Libby Webb, MSW

Like many ubiquitous terms, mindfulness could stand to be better explained before it can be fully embraced. Based on age-old contemplative practices found in most religions, notably Buddhism, mindfulness is defined as a mental state achieved by focusing one’s awareness on the present moment, while acknowledging one’s feelings, thoughts, and sensations. Its broad appeal in today’s frenzied world is its ability to calm the mind through practices such as mindful breathing, meditation, body scans, and intentions of gratitude. 

“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.”

Loss, Grief and Homework

Posted on by Dana Humphrey

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.

Video provided by the Parmenter Foundation.

“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/.

UR Well

Posted on by Alfredo Gago

For the first 30 minutes, University of Rochester academic advisor Hana Goldstein thought her advisee seemed totally fine. Suddenly, she broke down in tears. 

“I was about to say to her, ‘Okay, have a great day. We’ll chat in a couple of weeks.’ And then she just started crying,” Goldstein said. “She opened up to me.”

It’s not uncommon for Goldstein to find her one-on-one sessions with students veering from the academic to the personal. Some students are quick to tell her about an issue they’re facing outside the classroom, she said, while others choke back those troubles, at least initially. “You never know what someone’s going through.”

There is a growing acknowledgement on college campuses that student mental health is influenced by a community of care, and not just one office or service. But taking a more public health approach to college mental health suggests all community members must be prepared to respond if a person reaches out or breaks down. At the University of Rochester, a new wellbeing initiative hopes to fill that need with a curriculum-based training program that helps faculty and staff support struggling students, and each other, in a way beyond “report and refer.”   

This fall, the Health Promotion Office at the University of Rochester launched the Well-being for Life and Learning Training Program, designed for student support staff like Goldstein, who are hungry for tools to support struggling students. The opt-in, self-paced program requires participating faculty and staff to take four core and two elective workshops on a range of wellbeing topics from supportive communities and suicide prevention to intercultural communication and religious diversity.

At its core, the Well-being for Life and Learning Program is a student success initiative, born from the understanding that if students are living better, they will learn better. Rochester’s Health Promotion Specialist for Student Well-Being, Rebecca Block, leads the Well-being for Life and Learning Training Program. She said faculty and student support staff interactions are particularly important to this work. 

Photo by J. Adam Fenster / University of Rochester

In 2021, when the Boston University School of Public Health, Mary Christie Institute, and Healthy Minds Network published a report on The Role of Faculty in Student Mental Health, Block found statistical support for the challenges she’d witnessed teachers confront first-hand. Of the more than 16,000 faculty surveyed, nearly 80% said they’d spoken to students about their mental health in the last year, while only 51% said they could confidently identify a student in distress. The majority (73%) said they would welcome opportunities to improve their skills in this area.

“That report made it more acceptable, I think, at a research institution to say, ‘Okay, this data came out of this study with over 12 universities’ faculty reporting this issue. This means that we should do something about it,’” Block said. 

That same year, in 2021, Block launched the Support Student Mental Health workshop series, bringing together ten experts to lead sessions on topics including trauma-informed pedagogy, recognizing students in distress, and educator self-compassion. By spring, 2023, the Health Promotion Office was polling Rochester’s faculty and staff, finding 85% had spoken to students about their mental health in the last year, but more than half had never received formal training to “navigate discussions with students in distress.”

Upon the success of the workshop series, Block began considering an even more formal, expanded platform to provide faculty and staff with the tools to support not only student mental well-being but their own well-being and that of the community generally. The result, launched this fall, was the Well-being for Life and Learning Training, complete with two unique tracks for faculty and staff, respectively, and offered both online and in-person. By showing faculty and staff how to care for not only struggling students but also themselves, the course tries to relieve some of the pressures that might otherwise detract from their own wellness and ability to teach. 

“This is really the first thing I’ve done that’s really focused on students’ well-being and mental health and how we as staff people can actually make an impact on their lives.”

Block said she first became passionate about faculty wellness as a teacher in New York secondary schools. She noticed how instructors’ stress, often internalized from their students, affected teaching. “Working in those classrooms really was the pivotal moment for me. I was like, ‘These kids are not going to learn. They’re not going to be well if their teachers are not able to regulate their own emotions, if they’re not able to support students in the ways that they need.”

For Amy McDonald, director of Rochester’s Health Promotion Office, one of the primary functions of the Well-being for Life and Learning Training Program is its contribution to a more institutional approach to student mental health and wellness. Historically, McDonald said she’s found a gap between the 70 or 80 health education programs run every year at Rochester and the reality of student health outcomes. “We were working so hard to help these students on an individual level, but it really wasn’t impacting their health. So, we really started to shift our thinking to, ‘How can we take a more systems and settings approach to this?’”

“Because we can teach them skills and give them the knowledge,” McDonald added, “but if they don’t live and exist in an environment that supports those choices and makes those choices easy, it’s going to be impossible for them to achieve that well-being.”

So far, the Well-being for Life and Learning Program has managed to draw employees from a variety of areas on campus with diverse levels of expertise in mental health care. Before enrolling, Hana Goldstein, for example, had already participated in a range of trainings and certifications to inform her student care as an academic advisor. Still, she said she was able to find workshops covering issues she had yet to explore in depth, including addressing grief and loss with students.

Because Health Promotion staff designed these workshops specifically for faculty and student support staff at the University of Rochester, Goldstein said she thinks they’ve chosen facilitators well-suited to advise their unique audience. She said she appreciated the leader of the elective workshop on “Compassion Fatigue” coming from Rochester’s Employee Assistance Program, which manages mental health services for employees. “Compassion fatigue can kind of seem like, ‘Oh, it’s just about self-care, and feel a bit redundant at times,’” Goldstein explained. “It was nice to hear about it from the perspective of someone who is not necessarily student-facing, but from someone who is more staff- and faculty-facing.”

Other staff who have participated, like Claudia Pietrzak, the user experience and social media manager for Rochester’s River Campus libraries, arrived at the workshops with a more limited background in mental health training. “This is really the first thing [I’ve done],” Pietrzak explained. “I mean, I have done safe space training and racial justice training here at Rochester and at previous institutions, but nothing that’s really focused on students’ wellbeing and mental health and how we as staff people can actually make an impact on their lives.”

The opportunity for formal training was exciting for Pietrzak, who said she would otherwise approach the mental health issues of students like those of friends. “It’s kind of like, ‘Well, I know what I would do for a friend, but I don’t know what I can do or what I should do as this person that I am on campus—where I’m an adult, even though I don’t often feel like it.”

In the four workshops she’s taken since early October, Pietrzak has already found practical applications in her everyday life. The suicide prevention course left “an impression on me [where] I know more what to look out for when working with other people and I know more about what it is I can do,” she said. The same compassion fatigue class that Goldstein took also came in handy, Pietrzak said, as she had just recently spoken to a coworker struggling under the weight of students’ rising stress levels as finals neared.

“The session on compassion fatigue was really good because, as a friend to this colleague, I felt very empathetic towards her, but I’m also kind of stressed out, too. So it’s like, ‘How do I take care of myself and not absorb this person’s stress?’” The course reaffirmed the importance of setting boundaries, Pietrzak said, to help her avoid ‘sinking with the ship.’ 

Moving forward, Rebecca Block hopes the Health Promotion Office will be able to connect the impact of the training to improved student success outcomes. “How can we tie GPAs or graduation rates or retention rates to students that attend classes from the people that have completed the training?” she said. “Is there any correlation there?”

For now, at least anecdotally, the Health Promotion team feels heartened by the positive feedback from the community, as they try to raise awareness around the initiative. “I worked with one of our athletic trainers a couple weeks ago, and he was going to bring [the program] to the director of athletics to see if it could be mandated that all head coaches complete the training,” Amy McDonald said.

“So that would be our goal—that it’s seen as something that is so beneficial that it’s required for employees to take.”

The Practical Wisdom of Elizabeth Cracco, PhD

Posted on by Alfredo Gago

Elizabeth “Betsy” Cracco does not take herself too seriously, avoids jargon, and explains public health and community wellbeing strategies with analogies involving frogs and ponds and building houses.  

Cracco’s plain-speaking approach may serve her well as she continues her role as assistant vice chancellor for Campus Life and Wellbeing, a newly-created position at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, aimed at one of the biggest challenges facing higher education today — improving wellbeing among a generation of students reporting high rates of anxiety, depression, and loneliness. Cracco’s office oversees Recreation and Wellbeing, Residential Life, and the Center for Counseling and Psychological Health, a three-legged stool supporting students’ psychological and physical health.  She said the nexus of all of these domains underpins her mission.  

“One of the biggest prescription pads we have is making connections and creating a sense of belonging–and you can’t do that from a seat in the counseling center alone,” she said. 

Cracco said cabinet-level wellness positions like hers are becoming more common on college campuses, due to the increased concern over student mental health and the growing acknowledgment that what has been called the campus mental health crisis is more of a public health problem, meaning multiple departments need to get involved to address it. In many ways, Cracco’s professional trajectory aligns with this expanded view. 

After graduating from College of the Holy Cross in Worcester, Massachusetts, Cracco received a master’s degree in counseling from Boston College, then a doctorate in counseling psychology from the University of Wisconsin Madison.  Holy Cross, a Jesuit school, had a strong sense of community and it was there that she took an interest in mind-body practices and attending retreats. Her first job was in residential life, living in a dorm, where she quickly learned that the position functioned as a way for students to share their personal stories, from eating disorders to relationship issues.  Her professional training included the relational culture model out of Wellesley College, a feminist ideology that puts the emphasis on the individual in context within the community. This led her to apply a public health approach to her work. 

“It occurs to you after you go from client to client in direct care that something else is wrong,” she said. “There is a systemic problem here we need to think about.  In other words, if all of the frogs in the pond are sick, why are we still asking, ‘What’s wrong with this frog?’” 

Cracco said her metaphorical move up-stream started early. When she was head of counseling at the University of Connecticut, she began a retreat program called C2 for “Connect and Challenge,” involving whitewater rafting, storytelling, and meditation. When the new position of (then called) executive director of wellness opened at UMass Amherst, the state flagship campus, Cracco went for it.  In her pitch presentation, her first slide included Maya Angelou’s advice on what we need to ask each other when we move into any social setting:  “Do you see me? Do I know that you care about me? Is it important I am here?” 

“If all of the frogs in the pond are sick, why are we still asking, ‘What’s wrong with this frog?’”

“If we could enact this same approach at a community level, it would mean that no matter what your struggles are, you would be held and you would not be alone because your community mates would be there, many going through the same struggles,” said Cracco. 

When she got the job in 2019, Cracco asked herself, “Am I hired to create a cohesion across three units on a campus, or am I hired to promote wellbeing across the entire campus?” She figured, either way, it was about crossing silos and making connections, something that became surprisingly possible during the pandemic and would lead to UMass signing on to the Okanagan Charter: An International Charter for Health Promoting Universities and Colleges. 

“During the pandemic, we really demonstrated how we could work together as a campus and how the academic side of the house can provide real, on-the-ground services. The public health students, the nursing students, they ran the clinics, gave the vaccinations, all of it.  After that, our dean of public health, dean of nursing, and vice chancellor of student affairs got together and said, ‘How can we keep this going?’  We figured the starting point was signing on to the Okanagan Charter.” 

Having the buy-in from then Chancellor, Kumble Subbaswamy, a prerequisite in signing the charter, meant that everyone on campus had some responsibility to promote wellbeing, including faculty.  Cracco said the tie-in to student success helped make the case.  

“You are not going to do well academically if you never sleep, eat trash, and have no social life, and we need to communicate that to students,” she said. “We all need to get out of the boxes we’ve made.” 

As an example of out-of-the-box thinking, Cracco’s team introduced a curriculum developed by the Benson-Henry Institute for Mind Body Medicine at Mass General Hospital, called Positivity and Relaxation.  The nine-session, credit-bearing course is taught in small groups and helps students self-regulate around anxiety in particular, but also depression.  It is not an alternative to therapy for those who need it, but an option for all students on campus. Cracco said they are running 300 to 400 students a year through these small group sessions and they’re receiving data on its effectiveness from the school of public health. 

“You are not going to do well academically if you never sleep, eat trash, and have no social life, and we need to communicate that to students.”

“We are seeing tremendous reductions in stress, increases in wellbeing, even increases in sense of belonging,” said Cracco.  

The course is funded by her office, but not owned and operated by any one department.  As she tinkers with its scale, Cracco is working with professionals within and beyond campus on developing other courses, some involving storytelling, and working closely with a colleague on courses specific to building resilience and belonging in students of color. As big a fan as she is of retreats, she said representation is an important consideration to watch in mind-body practices. “Who is teaching these practices?” she asks. “How do students feel when they are in them? There’s definitely a privileged, “Lululemon” subculture that exists here and we need to be aware of that.” 

As far as other programs go, whether it’s pond fire chats or another unnamed project involving swings she is secretly plotting, Cracco is full force as long as it is about making connections and forming relationships.  One of her latest efforts is to create quiet dining spaces for groups to eat “family style.”   

“We should be structuring connections at every turn,” she said. Asked about how this work plays out in the classroom, Cracco made an interesting point about technologies like ChatGPT. 

“We are no longer in a system where we have a person who has all the knowledge and people who receive that knowledge, because knowledge is everywhere,” she said. “Now, the process of learning is the process of learning together, like we do in the real world, and that is going to force a structure that is more communal, more experiential.”  

Cracco is optimistic about the wellness work taking place at UMass: “I think people are getting the upstream thing,” she said.  At the same time, the down-to-earth Cracco is realistic about how much can be done, given what she calls “the tyranny of time.” As an example, she leans into her first higher ed job in residential life and compares that to the myriad of duties and trainings that those professionals now need to complete.   

“What these people really want to be doing is making space for students,” she said. “We need professional staff to attend to those crisis situations, and these can be incredibly time consuming. How do we develop the human capital to make space for connection beyond, before and apart from the crises?”

New report on the enduring impact of COVID on the mental wellbeing of emerging adults

Posted on by Gaby Harlid

In a new paper sponsored by the Ruderman Family Foundation, Jeffrey Arnett, PhD, details the disproportionate and enduring impact of COVID-19 on the mental wellbeing of “emerging adults.” Arnett, a senior research scholar at Clark University, is a uniquely appropriate author for the paper, as he coined the term “emerging adults” over 20 years ago to describe young people in their twenties who exist in the “space between adolescence and young adulthood.” Arnett is also the executive director of the Society for the Study of Emerging Adulthood (SSEA), and author of Emerging Adulthood: The Winding Road from the Late Teens Through the Twenties.

In The Mental Health Effects of COVID-19- A Continuing Crisis, Especially for Emerging Adults ages 18-29, Arnett examined national data from before and during the COVID-19 pandemic from sources such as the CDC, the National Center for Health Statistics, the U.S. Bureau of the Census, the National Opinion Research Center, and the Pew Research Center, as well as numerous longitudinal studies from the literature.  His research showed that psychological distress was consistently higher for young adults ages 18-29 than all older age groups from March 2020 to September 2022, despite that group being at lowest risk physically from the disease.

“You would think that it would be the older people who would be the most affected in their mental health, because they were the most at risk for hospitalization and death during the pandemic, and they still are,” said Arnett in a June interview for the Mary Christie Institute’s podcast, the Quadcast. “It’s actually just the opposite. The oldest Americans are the ones who are least likely to report symptoms of anxiety and depression. Meanwhile, the emerging adults, the 18- to 29-year-olds, were the most affected in terms of their mental health.”

While Arnett said he was initially surprised by the data, he posited a few justifications in the report, starting with the outsize influence of the pandemic’s disruption on people in the midst of an intense developmental period.  While life disruptions were not unique to the age group, Arnett said, “from age 18 to 29, you’re trying to build the structure of an adult life. That’s the age where most people are getting the education that’s going to form the basis of a long-term occupation or profession, when people are moving out of their parents’ household, learning how to function as an adult on their own. It’s the age when people are having romantic relationships, thinking about what they want in a partner. And suddenly, all of this is blown up.”

In the report, Arnett pointed out that this population experienced disruptions or changes to the five features distinctive to the emerging adulthood life stage: identity explorations, during which they explore who they are, “trying out various possible futures;” instability, which was greatly exacerbated by the pandemic; self-focus (specifically in relation to parental ties waning), which veered into loneliness when they were cut off from their friends; feeling in between childhood and adulthood, which was extended during this time period; and optimism and high hopes about future possibilities, which were dimmed by the circumstances surrounding the pandemic.

“You would think that it would be older people who would be the most affected in their mental health, because they were the most at risk for hospitalization and death during the pandemic but it’s actually just the opposite.”

But, while there are clear, reasonable causes for the intense reaction to the initial disruption of the pandemic by emerging adults, Arnett said he was mystified that their rates of anxiety and depression have remained so high. In the paper, he noted that the rates of anxiety and depression for emerging adults remained as high in early 2023 as at the peak of the pandemic before vaccines were available–nearly 40% for anxiety disorder and nearly 35% for depression. (In fact, symptoms have remained above pre-pandemic levels for all adult age groups.) That pattern is continuing even now as the pandemic has waned, the report states. “Even after life has returned to normal in most ways, rates of anxiety and depression are nearly as high as they were at the peak of the pandemic. That was shocking,” he said. “Why do people still feel so bad even though life appears to have gone back to normal in so many ways?” he continued.

The report also highlights subgroups of emerging adults that have disproportionately borne the brunt of the pandemic from a mental wellbeing perspective: women and Asian Americans. Even though young women’s rates of depression and anxiety were already higher than young men before the pandemic, the report states, the gap between them has grown since the pandemic began. Arnett noted that this follows a long-standing pattern in mental health research, in which females report worse mental health outcomes across the spectrum. However, he called the widening of the difference “striking.”

Disturbingly, the pandemic triggered a racist backlash against Asian Americans, which may account for their disproportionate worsening of mental health. In addition to higher rates of mental health issues, most Asian Americans also reported believing that violence against their ethnic group is increasing; almost three quarters said they worry sometimes, almost every day, or every day that they might be threatened or attacked due to their ethnicity.

The paper outlines five recommendations for addressing the current mental health crisis and preparing for the next pandemic. Arnett recommends: reforming the mental health delivery system; expanding and improving teletherapy services; creating a website of resources for parents of emerging adults; improving online learning techniques; and holding a national conference of practitioners and policymakers at colleges and universities that examines which policies and programs were effective and which were not. He also recommends further examination into the phenomenon of why these levels of distress are not subsiding for emerging adults, including in-depth qualitative research with the young people themselves. 

“We need to urgently go forward with interviewing people, not just survey data, not just ‘tell me on a scale of one to five how anxious you feel or how depressed you feel,’ but ‘tell me in your own words why you’re still distressed.’”