Category: Mental Health

Ahead of the new academic year, a panel of undergraduates convened last Tuesday on Zoom to offer an audience of educators and administrators insight into some of the influences most affecting college student wellbeing today.

As the title suggests, “The State of Student Wellbeing: Navigating Pressure, Belonging, and A.I. on Campus” covered the young panelists’ views on a wide range of both academic and personal concerns, as well as ideas for how higher education leadership can help address them. 

The hourlong event was the second of its kind produced together by the Association for Undergraduate Education at Research Universities (UERU), a national consortium of leaders from research universities, and the Coalition for Student Wellbeing (C4SW), a student-led college mental health advocacy group. 

This time, the LearningWell Coalition, which promotes best practices in college student wellbeing, was also an organizing partner. The LearningWell Coalition is the publisher of LearningWell magazine.

After words of welcome from UERU Executive Director Steven Dandaneau, Angela Lindner, the executive director of the LearningWell Coalition, opened the session with an overview of trends in college student wellbeing, as well as ways forward. Recent measures of flourishing and purpose are troubling, she said, but evidence shows experiential educational experiences, like mentorship, internships, and research, can set students for long-term success.

“To fully support lifelong wellbeing, we must liberate our students and our own universities from the burden of the notion that the only purpose of college is to punch a ticket toward a job, and we must provide access to and participate in these relationship-rich, lifelong giving experiences available to all students, not just for a portion of our population,” Lindner said.

The remaining time was devoted to the student panel, which was moderated by Carson Domey, the founder of C4SW and a recent graduate of the University of Texas at Austin. He was joined by three of his members: Mayeesha Avi, a rising sophomore at Yale University; Leyli Balaghi, a rising sophomore at Arizona State University; and Aneesh Chintala, an incoming first-year at the Georgia Institute of Technology.

Time and again, the panelists highlighted how intertwined their academic experience is with their lives and struggles outside the classroom. 

Several of the stressors students identified might seem purely academic at first. Chintala spoke to his concerns about entering a university whose reputation for educational rigor he may not be able to keep up with. Avi pointed out how a prevalent “hustle culture” on her campus perpetuates the idea that “you’re always supposed to be doing more.”

But at a certain point, each of these academic anxieties became almost impossible to isolate from others, like financial or career-centered ones.  

In the nearly same breath that Chintala expressed his worry about maintaining an intense workload and top grades, he mentioned the coinciding urgency around “making sure that we have the internships, the experiences, and all of these different things needed in order to essentially get these jobs that we want.”

Avi, too, marked these entangled academic and professional pressures and how they can be exacerbated by financial need. “For students who are helping support not only themselves, but their families, it becomes even harder to slow down because success is tied to: How am I going to support my family in the future?” she said. 

According to Balaghi, financial concerns have the potential to influence just about every decision students make. Work hours could limit their class choices or ability to engage on campus in general. Earning requirements, not genuine interest, could dictate their major, extracurricular activities, or career path. 

There are also non-academic issues with potentially academic implications that are more personal or situational, the panelists revealed.

Balaghi opened up about the challenges of focusing on classes while grieving a close family member and far away from her support system at home. Avi said public and government scrutiny of her university, as well as general uncertainty about the future of higher education, has been distracting.

“There’s this underlying feeling that the landscape is constantly shifting,” Avi said. “As a student, that can feel very exhausting and confusing.”

Even the prevalence of A.I. in classrooms these days, the panelists noted, may have its roots in wellbeing issues. If young people were less afraid of failure, they might be more willing to trust themselves, instead of A.I.

If young people were less afraid of failure, they might be more willing to trust themselves, instead of A.I.

“I think it speaks a lot to the very kind of changing landscape of education that so many students are just so scared of making mistakes and so scared of not being perfect that they’re turning to tools like ChatGPT, like Gemini, countless others, because they know that it will usually output a correct answer,” Avi said.

To mitigate this reliance on A.I., Avi suggested “bringing it back to encouraging mistakes and encouraging the organic kind of thinking things through.” She mentioned a friend who was put at ease by a math professor who graded assignments based on proof of process, rather than the accuracy of final answers. 

A.I. chatbots are one tool the students all agreed should not be considered a mental health solution. 

Chintala recognized why young people, especially young men, might gravitate towards A.I. to work through emotional concerns. Its accessibility makes it a convenient option, he said, and a non-human sounding board could appeal to those hesitant to be vulnerable with others about their feelings. 

Still, Balaghi said, A.I. isn’t an appropriate replacement for professional, in-person mental health support. Institutions should educate students on its limitations, as well as provide the human resources they really need. 

“University leaders, I believe, should not simply tell students to stop using A.I. Instead, I believe that they should ask what A.I. is providing that [the] current support system at their institution is not,” Balaghi said.

All of the panelists agreed that one of the best buffers against college pressures have been the people and spaces that make them feel secure. A sense of genuine belonging, whether to cultural groups or living-learning communities, has helped each make second homes of their campus. Accessible and culturally responsive mental health resources on campus, they added, can reinforce that safety, too.

“Community has made all of the difference for me,” Avi said. “I think universities do a really great job when they create spaces where students can find people who share some part of their identity.” 

Often, the message the panelists seemed most keen to get across was that they are eager to be involved in determining and improving the decisions about how to address their own health and wellness. 

“One thing I hope university leaders remember is that today’s students are incredibly invested in their campuses. I mean, they serve as our second home for a large majority of the year,” Avi said in a closing statement. 

“We don’t want to just receive decisions. We actually want to help shape them.”

You can reach LearningWell Reporter Mollie Ames at mames@learningwellmag.org with comments, ideas, or tips.

For nearly two decades, the rising rates of mental health struggles among college students have been well researched and well reported. This much-needed awareness catapulted the issue to the top of administrators’ priority lists, resulting in task force recommendations that focused primarily on treatment expansion. In fact, the majority of the response to what the media has coined the “college student mental health crisis” has been just that — a response. 

A growing number of campus leaders across the country are now promoting a different lens through which to view college student mental health — one that is proactive and population-based. Encouraged by movements such as the Okanagan Charter, which advises colleges and universities to embed health and wellbeing into every aspect of campus life, this new thinking takes into account determinants of health, both protective factors as well as risk factors, that help or inhibit students from thriving. 

Part of the appeal of a health promotion approach comes from frustration about the unsustainability and limitations of the clinical model most colleges maintain. While experts support strengthening and expanding counseling services for those who need them, demand will continue to outpace resources at most institutions. At the same time, many students who could use some level of support aren’t asking for it, indicating there could be other non-clinical on-ramps that could help with issues that may be more developmental or environmental. And as with all downstream models, counseling treats those who have already developed a problem, begging a question about what might have helped earlier. 

As valid as these arguments may be, moving upstream by focusing on mental health, not just mental disorders, requires colleges and universities to make an institutional mindset shift. This is not always easy to achieve in a sector dominated by entrenched beliefs. The broader, more holistic approach takes interdepartmental coordination and buy-in (no more “not my job” rationalizations), introduces new phrasing like “psychological health,” and requires the currency with which institutional decisions and investments are made in higher education: evidence. 

“It really takes the wellbeing conversation away from, ‘What are the student affairs people doing about this?’”

“For a while now, we’ve been able to understand individual health outcomes which are easier to measure,” said Chris Dawe, the former chair of the U.S. Health Promoting Campuses Network, which is affiliated with the Okanagan Charter. “I think we need much better data on the kind of work we are doing at the systems level that allows us to make better decisions about what works and doesn’t work.” 

Researchers working in the field of college student mental health acknowledge this need and are helping to close the data gap on a preventive approach. Daniel Eisenberg, along with Sarah Lipson, directs the University of Michigan’s Center for Healthy Minds study, whose annual survey has been largely responsible for sounding the alarm on the rising rates of mental health issues among college students. They are now developing a best practices repository: a comprehensive, publicly accessible repository of evidence about the effectiveness of various public health and preventative programs, services, and policies that address college student mental wellbeing.

“Campuses offer an ideal setting for preventive strategies because there are so many different ways to reach students over a sustained period of time with supportive resources and practices,” Eisenberg said. “But campus leaders and administrators need to pay close attention to two major challenges in implementing these strategies. First, which strategies actually have strong evidence of effectiveness? Second, how can we ensure that these strategies actually reach a large number of students in a meaningful way?”

Innovative partnerships

Another key player in the evidence-based prevention research arena is MindArch Health, a company that partners with colleges and universities on improving community health. Founded by Nadine Wilches, a clinical social worker and researcher, MindArch uses a comprehensive software solution to assess and enhance mental wellbeing and resilience within campus populations. It is both a product and a strategy, starting with a survey tool institutions use with their students, and often faculty and staff, to determine a wellbeing protection/risk profile. 

“The mission behind our work is to reduce risk and reverse rates of mental and behavioral health problems,” Wilches said. “We do that by trying to predict those most at risk using a community mental health model which is more socioecological. We look at the whole campus system and the impact of mental wellness through what we call protective factors in the research.” 

The product, called MAP (MindArch Automation Pathway), is evidence-based, strength-based, and pre-clinical. MindArch uses an EQUIP model (Examine, Quantify, Unite, Inquire, Plan) for the process overall and the five elements of a systemic wellbeing framework in its surveys. These are: self-efficacy, psychological safety, emotional control, interpersonal attunement, and self-assurance. 

“We are measuring the factors that are known to buffer against mental health problems — things like security, belonging, connection, sense of self. And then we break all those down into questions that allow us to direct solutions,” Wilches said.

After the assessment, which includes qualitative research with key stakeholders, the MindArch process calls for bringing together leaders from across campus for a three-part planning phase that produces sustainable changes towards a tangible goal. The areas in consideration are the 4 P’s — policies, practices, programs, and places — with the question being: How has what we learned influenced these domains? Once interventions are in place, a pre- and post-assessment provides the schools with efficacy data. The outcome of the process can involve every aspect of the university, from the classroom to the surrounding community. 

“We’re working on changing environments and environmental conditions that produce stress that can be prevented rather than saying each individual on campus needs X, Y, and Z,” said Tim Ecklund, the vice president for partnerships at MindArch. Ecklund came to the company after many years in student affairs leadership positions, including at Stonybrook University and Utica College. He said, during his career, he was struck by how little colleges and universities were doing to strengthen mental health, while they focused most of their attention on how to address mental disorders. “MindArch was what I wished I had,” he said. 

MindArch’s preventive mindset, and its focus on strategies that can impact everyone on campus, appeals to many administrators looking for more comprehensive solutions. Cheryl Barnard, the dean of students at Miramar College, a community college in San Diego, is a customer of MindArch. She spent many years as a student affairs leader for private, four-year institutions on the east coast.

“In all my years as an administrator, mental health has always been about the delivery of a service to the students who come to counseling,” she said. “This is the first time where I feel like I have an evidence-based strategy that looks at the entire population and not just the 1 percent to 5 percent who find their way to the counseling center.” 

“This is the first time where I feel like I have an evidence-based strategy that looks at the entire population and not just the 1 percent to 5 percent who find their way to the counseling center.” 

Barnard said MindArch has allowed her to reach that larger student group with strategies that are specific to her campus. After receiving the data regarding protective factors and risk factors among students at Miramar, she pulled a task force together to consider what changes they might make on campus. One idea included putting together a skills building program for the school’s ANAPI population (Asian-American, Native Hawaiian, Pacific Islanders) after these students reported a deficit in their decision-making abilities. Another involved pooling resources that would combine supporting students’ health, mental health, and basic needs. 

Barnard’s favorite part is the data. “MindArch gives you evidence-based practices based on the data you’ve collected so you’re not guessing. It’s hard to argue with a result we’ve gotten from 300 of our own students.” 

MindArch’s broad application on campus means that many of its customers come from different corners of the institutions. Stuart Sidle served as the dean of the School of Social and Behavioral Sciences at Mercy University in New York. He now leads a $5.25 million U.S. Department of Education STEM Ready H.S.I.-STEM grant at the university. As an organizational psychologist and student success strategist, Sidle was particularly drawn to MindArch’s focus on resiliency and its correlation to persistence. 

“We’ve had some very good opportunities to use this data,” Sidle said, pointing to a new training for faculty that helps students with self-regulation by having them reflect on their own energy and time during exam periods. “We’re really looking at what we can we do to help people stay in a good place before they are struggling,” he said. “It really takes the wellbeing conversation away from ‘What are the student affairs people doing about this?’ to ‘Let’s all be aware of the adjustments we can make to help students thrive.’” 

MindArch was launched in September 2025 as a for-profit company, though Wilches prefers to call it a social enterprise, as it receives donations and puts profits back into research and development. At an average of $14,000 a year, it is now in seven schools and growing. Its pitch to higher education includes its advantageous use of competing resources given its scale. Here again, is where evidence comes into play. 

“One school saw an 8 percent improvement across four or five elements in just one academic year,” Wilches said. “Another saw an 11 percent improvement in psychological health by strengthening the protective factor they had targeted. In fact, 100 percent of our institutions have been able to get additional funding from the data we originally collected.” 

You can reach LearningWell Editor Marjorie Malpiede at mmalpiede@learningwellmag.org with comments, ideas, or tips.

When Adam Delaney entered college in 2024, he’d already honed a remarkable set of skills. He wasn’t fresh off captaining a high school team or founding a club like many other first-years. Around the time most of his classmates were born, Delaney was 19, joining the Marines, and readying for combat in Iraq and Afghanistan. In his 20s, he was concerned about life or death, rather than As or Fs. 

That doesn’t mean navigating higher ed came easily when he decided to go back for his bachelor’s at 40. His time in the service made him supremely competent at tackling situations most civilians can’t imagine; it also made doing anything else afterwards challenging in a way most will never understand.

So what can colleges and universities do to give veterans like Delaney the greatest shot at success? At Arizona State University, the expansion of services for military-connected students has been critical amid the ballooning of that population — up nearly 15,000 in the last four years alone. The approach, though, has gone beyond streamlining systems for processing G.I. benefits, as important as those are. Leadership at A.S.U.’s Pat Tillman Veterans Center is investing in a tailored and deeply relational style of support, aiming to pull in those like Delaney and keep them — through to graduation. 

While Delaney knew little about the Pat Tillman Center before enrolling at A.S.U., he now attributes it with restoring a sense of family he didn’t realize he’d missed. “It makes it feel more like we [veterans] belong than anything else,” he said. “Students who are there just out of high school or something like that, they all share that; they have that community with each other. So it was cool to have our own community as well.”

The Uphill Battle

In 2011, the Pat Tillman Center launched to offer military-connected students, who include current and former service members and their dependents, a designated space for advising and connecting with each other. Spanning 3,340 square feet in the basement of the student union on the main Tempe campus, the facility replaced the old face of A.S.U. veteran support: a window in the registrar’s office where students could go, slip their paperwork under the glass, and be on their way. 

When the center opened, fewer than 2,000 military-connected students attended A.S.U. Now there are 25,000. A surge in remote learning has been key to the rapid expansion of both the university’s military population and its general one. Of the 194,000 students at America’s largest public university, more than a third are remote; at least 11,000 of them are military-connected.

The expansion of services for military-connected students has been critical amid the ballooning of that population — up nearly 15,000 in the last four years alone.

Shawn Banzhaf, the executive director of the Pat Tillman Center, believes the center has helped drive enrollment, whether online or off, by sending a message to service members that they matter here. “The more you can understand them, the more they feel like they belong, the more they’ll stay here, and the more they’ll tell their buddies about it,” he said. The strategy is a self-fulfilling prophecy of sorts: The more vets who come in chasing the promise of community, the stronger it gets. Eventually it’s 25,000 and counting.

Of course, the numbers mean very little without the necessary support to back students up and bring them together. A point of pride for the Pat Tillman Center staff is that most served in the military, so they’re intimately familiar with the challenges their students can encounter. Banzhaf described a road through college riddled with fits and starts. In 1991, he enlisted in the Army National Reserve freshly out of high school, in large part to be able to pay for higher education. Once he found himself juggling a civilian career as a police officer, a family, and deployments, including 15 months in Iraq, he was forced to adapt. In the end, 20 years passed before he finished his degree.

Banzhaf said the challenges veterans encounter in college — and the Pat Tillman Center aims to address — are wide-ranging and sometimes surprising, especially to those on the outside. One of the most underestimated, he finds, is the financial strain. While the G.I. Bill may cover expenses like tuition and housing costs, it can leave others, from food to gas to medical bills, to pile up, while income has often stopped coming in. 

Adam Delaney had been out of the Marines for more than a decade when he decided to go back to school. Nervous about abandoning his six-figure salary as a sales manager at O’Reilly Auto Parts, he turned to the Pat Tillman Center early on, finding staff could walk him through options — scholarships, work-study, federal aid — to lighten the load. They armed him with a detailed checklist to guide him through finding and completing the necessary forms. “They took the stress away,” he said. “I could do this without having a job and, you know, survive.”

Other concerns for student veterans are more cultural. They don’t just tend to be older or in a different life stage than their peers; they’re adjusting to a vastly different way of life. Military tradition emphasizes structure, disciple, and respect for hierarchy, Banzhaf said. “Veterans are used to you saying, ‘Do this, then go here. Do this, then go here and do this.’ And if you don’t do all these things, somebody gets killed.” In college, there are far fewer rules and almost no play-by-play instructions. Veterans often chafe, Banzhaf said, at the sight of students glued to their phones in class, ignoring their professor. 

To help with this transition, A.S.U. offers specific orientations and a first-year College 101 course tailored to veterans’ needs and experiences. “Veterans don’t need to know how to live in dorms,” Banzhaf said. “They don’t need to know the best practices of staying away from the bars.” Instead, Student Success for Veterans covers issues like the “hidden curriculum” — rules and expectations often implicit in higher ed but unknown to those who have been out of school for a while. Students also learn how to help others navigate trauma, and Banzhaf said many come to realize the ones most in need of help are themselves. 

Trauma is a critical barrier the Pat Tillman Center recognizes can impede veterans’ success. Delaney said his alcoholism, which spawned from post-traumatic stress disorder after his tours in the Middle East, led to two uncompleted degrees at two different community colleges before he got to A.S.U. That’s why he’s now pursuing a degree in social work to support other veterans on similar recovery journeys. It’s also why Banzhaf and his team continue to build out a range of programming for holistic wellbeing, from equine and art therapy to guitar and cooking classes. “If you can think of a way,” Banzhaf said, “we’re doing it.”

Trekking Through

One of the Pat Tillman Center’s most unique offerings is a program called Treks for Vets, which involves leading a group of student veterans in a rigorous, multi-day hiking trip. Banzhaf was part of a team that started the program after participating in a similar one with a Colorado-based nonprofit, Huts for Vets. He spent four, ten-hour days in the Aspen Mountains, climbing between 9,000 and 12,000 feet in elevation, and found the experience as rewarding as it was exhausting. In the wild he learned he hadn’t resolved his trauma from the war as completely as he’d thought. 

Back at A.S.U., Banzhaf was committed to helping recreate the opportunity for his students. Now, twice a year, he takes a group of seven to 10 A.S.U. veterans to a base camp in northern Arizona for four days of trekking — and then some. The students do readings and discuss them together. They relish in nature, disconnected from technology. They participate in morning Qigong, a meditative movement practice. They eat nourishing meals.

The bonds that form during this time are not so dissimilar from ones formed in military service.

The bonds that form during this time are not so dissimilar from ones formed in military service, Banzhaf said. In both contexts, participants are pushed together in a uniquely close way and made vulnerable by grueling exercise. An important differentiator is that, on Treks for Vets, students have the opportunity to be open, whether on the trail or in organized conversations, about some of the most challenging and raw elements of their service. There’s no rank or title here, Banzhaf likes to remind them. 

“All of a sudden these hard chargers that are used to not showing any emotion at all, because it could cost you your job or it could show that you’re weak and it could hurt your pride, start opening up because it really, truly doesn’t matter,” said Delaney, who was a participant in Treks for Vets before becoming a trip leader. He’s seen conversation topics run the gamut among his expeditions, though the through-line is veterans being open and connected in a rare and freeing way. Sometimes they talk about combat and trauma. Other times it’s the transition to college. “And that’s fine too,” Delaney said, “because it’s something people have been holding in, and we all sit and talk about it.”

Not everyone signs up for Treks for Vets wanting or expecting more than a camping trip. But most, Banzhaf suspects, “come because they need something.” Maybe it’s a change of scenery; maybe it’s connection or direction or meaning. Students who were contemplating suicide have told Banzhaf the trip kept some them from attempting. “It brought them to a place of hope and encouragement and community and all the things that all of us need anyway, but they just hadn’t found it, yet.”

Banzhaf’s only regret where Trek for Vets is concerned is that it can’t reach more students. Ideally, he said, he’d be running trips four times a year, but without the funding to train new staff, expansion just isn’t in the cards right now. At $15,000 per trip, Treks for Vets ends up eating up about a third of the Pat Tillman Center’s $100,000 annual operating budget, which depends on a per-student stipend from the Veterans Affairs Department. The university covers salaries for staff, but there’s always room for more. Where the V.A. recommends universities hire one School Certifying Official per 125 student G.I. Bill users, Banzhaf has just eight, attending to thousands.

The limitations on staff make the strength of connections among students that much more important. Delaney believes he’s never felt like a “number” among vets at A.S.U. because of the emphasis on peer support. In his first fall, it was often students — some working for the Pat Tillman Center, others not — who were his confidants and helped him learn about new opportunities for military-connected students or talk through challenges. This semester, Delaney and a friend from Treks for Vets buddied up to take all the same classes after discovering they share the same field of study. “We know who the other veterans are when we see them walking down the hallway like, ‘Yep, that guy’s a vet, or that girl’s a vet.’ You can spot them,” he said. “That starts the conversation.”

You can reach LearningWell Reporter Mollie Ames at mames@learningwellmag.org with comments, ideas, or tips.

Xochitl Casillas’ students were moping again. As the dean of Chicano Latino student affairs at the Claremont Colleges, she had come to expect this phenomenon: When February rolled around, and Valentine’s Day became imminent, those without partners seemed to feel their singledom more keenly than ever. She called them, affectionately, the “lonely hearts club.” She also wanted to help.

Starting last year, Casillas organized an event on Valentine’s Day-eve for students who didn’t want to be alone to come together. The main activity was an art workshop, called Campus Colors and Connection, which asks students to consider the feelings different colors provoke and then create abstract drawings to represent those feelings or related experiences. By sharing their work and thinking with each other, they could learn more about their peers, as well as themselves.

“This is the time where a lot of people who want partnership may not have it,” Casillas remembered telling the group. “But today, this is an opportunity to connect.”

The workshop Casillas led her students through was developed by The Foundation for Art and Healing, a nonprofit that promotes the arts as an intervention for loneliness. Jeremy Nobel, M.D., Ph.D., a physician and lecturer at Harvard Medical School, started the foundation to explore the impact of the arts on health generally but pivoted towards developing arts-based resources for loneliness about a decade ago. At that point, loneliness was emerging as a predominant mental health concern, and research had begun to suggest what Nobel already suspected: The arts could help.

Today, with loneliness widely considered a national crisis and young adults particularly affected, Nobel continues to believe in art as an antidote. Lately, he and his team have made a special push to bring their work to colleges and universities. Educators, like Casillas, all too familiar with their students’ struggles, have become eager partners. Even those who might question handing crayons to twenty-somethings are considering: Can they afford not to try?

“I think loneliness is where depression was 20 years ago,” Nobel said, “where people didn’t even want to say it out loud.” In other words, Americans may have come around to the idea that depression is a medical condition, rather than a personal defect, but they don’t necessarily treat loneliness with the same open mind. Nobel, whose background is in internal medicine, likes to say loneliness is just a biological signal that a person needs to connect, like feeling thirsty is a signal to drink water. He urges others to adopt this same understanding, or risk the consequences. 

Evidence shows that, physically, loneliness can make people vulnerable to inflammation, higher blood pressure, and a weaker immune system. Mentally, they may act less rationally and more impulsively; they may begin to see the world as threatening. And the lonelier they stay, the more threatening the world seems and the more difficult it becomes to develop connections in the future. Nobel calls this “spiraling.” 

Young people report to be the loneliest of any age group, despite seeming so well-connected online. Even considering the end of the pandemic and return to in-person learning, Gen Z continues to indicate widespread loneliness; in 2024, up to eight in 10 were saying they had been lonely in the last year. As for why, a slew of familiar explanations abounds, like the impact of social media, drawing youth away from “real” human interaction. 

Art and Healing

For Nobel, the connection between loneliness and the arts wasn’t immediately apparent. At first, his interest in the health impacts of creative expression was focused on how it might help treat acute trauma. He had personally sensed the benefits after using poetry to make sense of his feelings about the Sept. 11 attacks. A psychologist overseeing a similar brand of work in a more formal setting confirmed patients were finding relief, specifically across race and class backgrounds. 

“The arts seemed to be helpful across all these wide horizons,” Nobel said, “which meant something was going on that really rewired your brain in some important ways.” 

In 2003, Nobel launched The Foundation for Art and Healing, eager to explore the effects himself. He kept the focus on trauma-affected groups — first those with military backgrounds, then those dealing with sexual, domestic, meteorologic, and other forms of trauma. As the scope expanded, Nobel heard a common refrain: The programs “made them less lonely and more connected.” 

Brain imaging now shows how areas associated with social connection light up while subjects engage with art.

Science was catching up, too. Brain imaging now shows how areas associated with social connection light up while subjects engage with art. Other findings suggest it can reduce hormones associated with stress and increase “feel-good” ones, like dopamine, serotonin, and oxytocin. 

As evidence mounted, the foundation turned its attention fully to art’s possible sway over loneliness. In its current form, the organization aims to raise awareness and reduce stigma around loneliness, as well as disseminate research-based programs that help people connect. Offerings include original films, online exercises, and in-person workshops, all within the organization’s signature initiative, Project UnLonely.

Core to all this work, and meant to maximize its impact, is the foundation’s public health approach. The Foundation for Art and Healing team partners with other businesses and organizations to implement its services, rather than delivering them directly. It also prioritizes simple and low-cost interventions that don’t require prior medical or professional training to implement. “The key is to do things that meet three criteria: effectiveness, scalability, and sustainability,” Nobel said.  

While the foundation also targets the general public, the elderly, and workers in high-stress environments, Gen Z has become a particular focus. Community-based organizations like museums and libraries can be good partners for reaching the 18 to 28-year-old demo. But, Nobel said, “by far the most direct way is through colleges and universities.” 

So far, the foundation has reached more than 50 campuses and 6,000 students. The institutions range from Harvard’s T.H. Chan School of Public Health to large public research universities in the south and small community colleges on the west coast. The activities appeal to a range of campus community members, including those in student affairs, residential life, spiritual life, athletics, and even campus museums. 

At the Claremont Colleges, students used the Campus Colors and Connection exercise to explore their common cultural identity. When Casillas asked them to represent, through different colors and shapes, what brings them joy, for example, she said her Latino students depicted cooking with a grandparent in the Dominican Republic, swinging in a hammock in Puerto Rico, and speaking Spanish. She watched them become eager to tell their stories and encourage new friends to do the same. 

“People are like, ‘Oh, it feels like we’re back in elementary school. We’re just coloring,’” Casillas said. “But I think they didn’t realize how vulnerable they were going to get.” After the 45-minute Valentine’s Day session ended, students lingered to continue the conversation.

The simplicity, perhaps child-like nature, of the exercise might push some away. But Nobel said the playfulness is the point. It’s also part of the draw as a less intimidating, or clinical, form of self-care. “We never frame it as therapy,” he said of the workshops. “We often don’t even use the word loneliness in our promotion of it.” Instead, the directive is simple: “Create and connect.”

Expanding Connections

The University of New England was an early adopter of Campus Colors and Connection, starting about four years ago. Coming out of the pandemic, Dean of Students Jennifer DeBurro said she and her team decided to take a “10,000-foot view” of the student wellbeing issue: “We were asking ourselves questions about on-ramps: What are some of the additional ways that we could provide opportunities for students to connect with peers in a low-risk, easy way?” That’s when they were introduced to Nobel’s work. 

First a one-off program, Campus Colors and Connection is now part of U.N.E.’s orientation program. “They can just talk — talk about what’s making them nervous about going off to school, talk about what’s exciting, reflect on a memory,” DeBurro said of incoming students.

When it comes to evaluating the workshop, the primary mechanism is the survey students fill out after participating. Questions prompt them to reflect generally on the experience, and so far, the results are positive. The vast majority have reported they would recommend the workshop to others (96 percent), as well as feeling more in touch with their emotions (84 percent) and more connected to their peers (84 percent). 79 percent of those who indicated feeling lonely beforehand said they felt less lonely afterwards. 

Yet Nobel recognizes the survey work isn’t as robust as it could be. He hopes to expand assessment to consider the potential impact on student success, including academic performance and retention. “Does being more connected increase learning? All the evidence says it should,” he said. 

As the foundation aims to strengthen assessment efforts, Claremont and U.N.E. continue to extend their partnerships with the foundation. Casillas has now led Campus Colors and Connection not only for her Latino students broadly but with a group of student mentors, who learned to run a version of the session themselves. She also brought the workshop to fellow staff. 

U.N.E. recently began offering a tailored version of the Campus Colors and Connection for first-gen students. “We continue to talk about it in as many different corners of the university as we can,” DeBurro said, “so that any opportunity we have to bring it to a new population, we do.”

You can reach LearningWell Reporter Mollie Ames at mames@learningwellmag.org with comments, ideas, or tips.