Category: Mental Health

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

A Way Forward

Posted on by Dana Humphrey

There is finally some better news about student mental health: this year’s Healthy Minds Study shows for the second year in a row a drop in depression, anxiety, and suicidal ideation among college students. While the overall rates remain alarmingly high–more than a third of students say they struggle with mental health issues–this two-year decline suggests that increased pre- and post-Pandemic attention and support may be making a difference.

More robust services alone, however, will not solve the student mental health crisis. I’ve witnessed it up close, as a faculty member and administrator at Bennington College, and at a remove, as a higher education program officer at Endeavor Foundation. It is very real. A college is not a treatment center, nor can it reasonably provide everything that students and their families require as they grapple with a tangle of issues.

Colleges and universities must simultaneously reinvest in the most powerful educational contributions that college can make to fortify student mental health: helping students discover their purpose and see beyond themselves.

Finding purpose–once understood as a primary aim of college–has been steadily squeezed out by the gradual and insistent equating of education and career preparation. Intense pressure for return on an ever more costly investment has changed the face of U.S. higher education. The liberal arts, in particular, which emphasize discovery of self and the world, continue to strain under perceived lack of relevance to careers, despite plentiful evidence to the contrary. Unsurprisingly, the study of the humanities, the lifeblood of the liberal arts, is in precipitous decline.

Further, we are compelling youth to determine ever earlier what they will study. Uncertainty has become a proxy for the waste of time and money. But many teenagers do not know what they want to do and–crucially–have not had enough exposure to the possibilities to make such determinations. College is meant to foster this developmental process through exploration and the ignition of interests and passions. This discovery has long been advanced by the liberal arts as essential to well-being, in service of both the student and civic and social good.

A recent Gallup survey found that the happiness and satisfaction of Generation Z is directly linked to the belief that their life has significance. Yet, today, more and more students are making the choice of a major based on the salary that related jobs command, rather than freely choosing the fields they are most drawn to making their own. Across higher education, the number of bachelor’s degrees in computer and information sciences, engineering, health, and business has more than doubled over the past ten years.

the content of higher education is shrinking, and with it a primary pathway to finding well-being through fulfillment.

Declines in arts and humanities majors are leading, on a macro level, to consolidations and cuts of disciplines at all but the best resourced institutions. Concurrently, liberal arts-focused colleges are disappearing at a steady clip. Both dramatically and quietly, the content of higher education is shrinking, and with it a primary pathway to finding well-being through fulfillment.

The contraction of the liberal arts and humanities is also robbing students of opportunities to understand what it means to be human. While there is debate as to whether the youth mental health crisis can be directly attributed to social media addiction and technology use, there is also widespread acceptance that both have radically changed how young people know, experience, and respond to the world. A stunning portion of teen’s social interactions are mediated by tech companies, their time displaced in the repeating reels of Tiktok and Instagram. The development of broad perspective, something at the heart of the liberal arts and humanities, is critical to releasing them from this algorithm.

Students need the span of knowledge, breadth of understanding, and portals to past human experience that a liberal arts orientation offers, whether at a small college or a large university, both for themselves and for society. Such far-reaching intellectual anchoring nurtures the ability to wrestle with the large, open questions that frame our existence and situate ourselves within them, individually and collectively.

Disciplines such as literature, history, and the arts are sourced from the human condition itself and particularly suited to opening the mind to new ways of understanding it. At the same time, to combat social isolation, students need common curricular experiences and co-curricular opportunities for engagement, debate, and dialogue. They need to be able to locate their very different individual selves as part of something larger, together.

But general education, the vehicle for delivering common content, has lost its vitality over time, weakened, in part, by demands for greater career preparation. Even at liberal arts institutions, core curricula—rendered fraught by decades-long political and ideological debates about their makeup—now largely privilege individual choice over shared, common experiences. As a result, students have fewer bridges to each other through common historical and societal knowledge, when what they need are more and stronger ones. Recognizing the opportunity to rebuild their educational frameworks around understanding of our shared humanity is one of the most significant steps that colleges and universities can take to strengthen student mental health.

At Endeavor Foundation, we are supporting a project at eleven small liberal arts colleges to do exactly that through collaborative efforts. Together, these colleges are infusing the personal and intellectual discovery they catalyze with new forms of support and inquiry. They are introducing initiatives to help students metabolize stress and build resilience, as well as bolster their real-time connection to others and draw out purpose through their studies. And they are helping students identify, prepare for, and secure future work born of what matters to them.

There is no doubt that policy makers and educational leaders must address the skyrocketing cost of higher education. Students, most especially those from underrepresented backgrounds, can no longer be left with crippling debt or, worse, excluded from the very social mobility that college promises and–ultimately–delivers. At the same time, we must reset the narrative that career preparation is college’s main function and re-value students’ future mental health as an equally vital outcome.

Isabel Roche is the Executive Director for Special Programs in Higher Education for the Endeavor Foundation.

Power Play

Posted on by Dana Humphrey

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Learning About Purpose

Posted on by Dana Humphrey

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Here is the full webinar:

Healthier Campuses

Posted on by Dana Humphrey

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The Long and Winding Road

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Talking student mental health and wellbeing with experts on campus

Posted on by Dana Humphrey

Dr. Zoe Ragouzeos, Vice President for Student Mental Health and Wellbeing at New York University and Dr. Eric Wood, Director of Counseling and Mental Health at Texas Christian University discuss what they are seeing in students returning this fall, how traumatic events of the past several years are affecting incoming students, and trends in the way we think about student behavioral health and wellbeing in higher education. 

You can listen to the episode on Spotify or Apple Podcasts.

Dr. Estevan Garcia is at the Table

Posted on by Dana Humphrey

Given his background, Dr. Estevan Garcia might be considered an unusual member of a college president’s cabinet. But as Dartmouth’s new Chief Health and Wellness Officer, the physician and public health expert works directly with President Sian Beilock on an issue she has made a well-publicized priority in her first year in office – protecting the mental health of students, faculty and staff. Garcia, who is a pediatrician specializing in emergency medicine, came to Dartmouth from the Massachusetts Department of Public Health where he helped led the effort to address the behavioral health crisis in emergency departments during the pandemic.

It is now Garcia’s job to lead Beilock’s health and wellbeing agenda, most specifically through the implementation of the school’s comprehensive strategic mental health plan called the “Commitment to Care.”  The origins of the plan predate Garcia’s arrival and was informed by a collaboration with the Jed Foundation, a non-profit organization dedicated to protecting emotional health and preventing suicide in young people. Beginning in 2020, the Dartmouth community lost several students, including by suicide, as the pandemic eclipsed college life.

Dr. Estevan Garcia

Four years later, the Jed Foundation featured Dartmouth as a success story in its impact report and Garcia is now focused on the longer term outcome data that will provide a more precise evaluation of their recent work.  He views the plan as a pathway to a wellness culture at Dartmouth that prioritizes self-care, community care and mental health innovation. With an increased staff and budget behind him, Garcia is addressing a number of wellbeing issues often associated with elite institutions, particularly ones like Dartmouth, located in remote areas with less community resources.  These include the stress of perfectionism among high-performing students and the lingering lack of belonging many students feel, particularly those with mental health issues and/or those with diverse identities. As the fall semester brings new and familiar challenges to students’ wellbeing, Dr. Garcia is ready and at the table.

LW: What was the thinking behind having a new position in this area reporting directly to President Beilock?

EG: I think her vision for the role was to elevate student mental health and wellness as a high priority but also to bring under one umbrella campus-wide health and wellbeing. Part of my portfolio is faculty and staff health and wellness so it was important to President Beilock to have that direct communication on all of the activities in this area across campus.

LW: How has your background in public health prepared you and/or motivated you to take on the position of Chief Health and Wellness officer at a college? 

EG: What brought me to this work came from what I saw in emergency departments during, and predating COVID, with adolescents and young adults in crisis. To me, that was really shocking.  When I started in the Department of Public Health {in Massachusetts} I partnered with the Mass Department of Mental Health through the community behavioral health programs, providing options that would divert the mental health crisis from emergency departments when appropriate.  I spent those two years heavily involved in the work we were doing to create an actual road map for behavioral health in Massachusetts. 

My background is in emergency medicine.  I useasthma as an example of the way we look at illness in the emergency department.  You would come to the emergency department after you had gone through your asthma action plan – “I’m a green, I’m a yellow, I’m a red,” — here’s how I step up my care so by the time you came to us, you had exhausted your plan.  Westarted to view behavioral health in the same way.  “I’m at home fighting with my parents, or “I’m depressed, I can’t leave my room” or “I’m in crisis, potentially I’m suicidal” – all of those scenarios have varying degrees of illness and severity.  Ifwe treated them all as emergencies, we would be failing our patientsand our ability to manage true crisis and emergencies.

LW: Do you have a similar strategy around health and wellbeing that you are utilizing at Dartmouth?

EG: When I first came here, it was important to explain to my colleagues what we mean by health and wellness because not everyone understands this. One of the things I did was develop a pyramid that shows the different degrees of mental health needs. The base of the pyramid is the 70% of the students we have here – very successful, high achieving – experiencing the stress that comes with that.  There’s another 20 to 25% who could use some clinical support.  The final piece at the top of the pyramid is the group of students who were most clinically concerning, potentially suicidal, and these are the student we need to act quickly to support and get into the appropriatesetting. 

The goal of this kind of structure is to understand that much of what we do is at the base – that 70% of our students need easy access to services and almost no barriers to the many wellness activities we should be providing across campus. The idea is that college is the right timeto experiment with wellness and to build your portfolio of activities and support strategieswhen you are successful – when you are at the base – so you can manage the challenges that will come your way.  You will be more prepared when you fail a test, or break up with your girlfriend, or have other challenges– all the things that challenge yourequilibrium andcould push you into crisis.

“College is the right timeto experiment with wellness and to build your portfolio of activities and support strategies when you are successful –- so you can manage the challenges that will come your way.”  

For the 20 to 25% in the middle, we have clinical  supports that help themmanage their illness, while also providing access to wellness activities.  With the smaller group, my job is to really help identify them as their situation evolves and get them the support that they need, and this can be a protective setting in a hospital if that’s necessary.  And it is really important that we don’t make them feel that they are alone.  You have to care enough about the students that require services outside of the college to partner with them – to give them time away, with support, and then bring them back with the appropriate accommodations. This is how I see my job.

LW: What have been some of your early priorities?

EG: President Beilock has recently completedher first year as presidentbut was very involved in the creation of the strategic plan for mental health and wellness before that. I would say the majority ofmy work since I came to Dartmouthhas been to implement that plan.  It has multipledeliverables and my job was to take that on and run with it, delivering on health and wellness as a priority for the president and for the campus.

Part of those deliverables involved new permanent staffpositions – across ourstudent health and wellness divisions.  It was really a huge investment by the college and we had to make sure those were the right positions and we were utilizing them in the right way.  

The Dartmouth community has faced several challenges since I arrived.  I think it is helpful to have a clinician at the table.  Health and wellness staff arenot enforcers, but supporters.  We arevery much there to support students, and help them engage in tough conversations. I think partnering with students has been one of the strongest game changers for me personally. I worked with them before as patients but now they are really partners to me in the work we are doing around health and wellness.

LW: What was the history behind the Commitment to Care plan?

EG: When Covid started, we (in reference to Dartmouth) were doing the best we could, but clearly it was very isolating on this campus and colleges across the country. It was not your normal college experience by far here and of course everywhere.  Beginningin 2020, we had several student deaths including bysuicide, and it was clear they needed to address what was happening.  In the summer of 2021, they brought the Jed Foundation in and that led to a major mental health review –  campus visits, survey data, all of that.  Additionally, the provost at the time set up a steering committee to work on an all-Dartmouth strategic plan on health and wellbeing from May 2023 to September 2023, that was the foundation of the Commitment to Care. It was across all campuses – undergrad, grad schools, professional schools. 

What makes it unique is that it is very stakeholder-driven, very student-driven and the result is this multi-year, campus-wide engagement with actual deliverables. What I found interesting when I first came to campus, folks would introduce themselves – students, staff, faculty – and they would say “I was on the committee for mental health” or “I was on the committee for health promotion.”

LW: What are the elements of the plan?  

There are five pillars to the plan which drive the many activities and initiatives that we are working on.  (From materials): Center wellbeing in all we do both inside and outside of academics; Create an inclusive community to foster mental health and well-being for students with diverse lived experiences; Equip students with the resources and skills to navigate both success and failure with strength and confidence; Proactively address mental illness to aid students in reaching their goals; Invest in innovative applications of evidence-based approaches to respond to changing environments and needs.

It is a very broad approach involving all aspects of the college.  Regarding the second pillar, we pride ourselves on attracting first generation students and students with diverse lived experiences, and it is important for us to center those lived experiences in what happens on campus, particularly here in rural New Hampshire. This includes how we address mental health and wellness and creating a sense of belonging.

President Beilock was clear that focusing on wellbeing is critical to a successfulacademic career. One of the key pillars for us is helping students navigate success and failure, this is number three.  There is an understanding that our students are incredibly driven. They are gifted and they are used to being at the top. They are not used to failure. But failure is part of succeeding and it is how you pick yourself up and move forward that is important.  We call it normalizing life.

Regarding wellness services, we have made significant gains here.  One of the first things I did was to move wellness to be a separate divisionwith a director reporting to me.  Our health services are really top notch and I wanted wellness to be on equal footing.  Additionally, we are arural community sometimes makingrecruitment difficult.  To better meet the needs of our students, we needed to find ways of extending and diversifying our services.  We partnered with a tele therapycompany, that gives us 24/7 behavioral health support for students and that made a big difference in accessibility when our team was not in the office.  We have several hundred students who have engaged with the service.  We have unlimited access to 30 minutes therapy slots any time of day or night and will beexpanding that to 50 minutes for those who need it.

The addition of the tele service didn’t lower our need for in-person services but it enabled other students to access therapy who might have been uncomfortable doing so before.  We know that a quarter of our students utilize our mental health services and that is similar across our student groups.  That is a significant point since historically, underrepresented students seek help less frequently. 

And the other piece – which I think is one of the harder ones – is thinking about data analysis and evidence-based approaches to make sure that what we are doing is impactful. This is really important because as we are delivering on a lot of these initiatives, we need to know what is helpful and not helpful and then redirect our time, energy and resources accordingly.

LW: You have said that some of your work is inside as well as outside the classroom.  What has been your experience there?

EG: There are a few tracks to this work, one involving academic policies and calendars that students have said would be meaningful to them in terms of reducing their stress levels over academics.  There’s also some interesting things faculty are doing in their classrooms by integrating mindfulness techniques in their academic disciplines including physiology and languages.   These are just some of the ways we are partnering with academic leadership, and I will say it does make a difference now that we are at the table.

“The Real World of College,” Continued

Posted on by Dana Humphrey

In their book The Real World of College: What Higher Education Is and What It Can Be, Howard Gardner and Wendy Fischman explore what stakeholders, on and off campus, believe to be the purpose of higher education and assess the degree to which these views are consistent.  Their research began in 2012 when “return on investment” was emerging as the catchphrase for pragmatic families choosing a post-secondary path amid rapidly rising tuition rates. The authors hoped the effort would help validate a sector they believed to be second to none in terms of encouraging personal growth and understanding the world in all its complexity. After studying 10 campuses of diverse profiles and conducting over two thousand interviews, the researchers concluded that their views were not widely held and that higher education “had lost its way.”

Among their key findings was an uncertainty among students regarding their reason for attending college; a strong turn toward vocationalism (what they call “earning over learning”); and misalignment — between families and students on one hand and between faculty and administrators on the other — about what college is all about. In their exploration, one dominant element emerged: the consistent reporting that student mental health was the biggest problem in higher education today. Gardner and Fischman make plausible connections among these findings — including providing context for the mental health phenomenon — and deliver a series of recommendations for how higher education can reclaim its meritorious role in individuals’ lives and in society. 

“We conclude that if higher education in the United States is to be successful in the twenty-first century, it needs to be sharply reframed,” they write in the book’s introduction.

This proposition is meticulously unpacked throughout the book, each chapter building a staircase of knowledge indicative of the authors’ unique contributions: Gardner, the famous developmental psychologist and giant in the academic theory space whose synthesis and sequencing reveal his decades as a professor; and Fischman, whose pure and artful approach to qualitative research succeeds in leading to authentic and, at times, vexing findings. In fact, The Real World of College raises as many questions as it answers, which led the authors to continue today their exploration of American higher education and the dynamics they believe have caused it to flounder. 

Since publishing the book in 2022, Fischman, Gardner, and their research team have been working on another major initiative to help colleges and universities center ethics and character development, encouraging students to think not just about themselves, but about others around them. The Beyond the Self project is testing the probability that, with sensitive guidance and ample practice, today’s young people can move from “I” to “we,” an effort the researchers see as critical to the fate of higher education, as well as the country’s future. In their office in Cambridge, Gardner and Fischman are joined by their graduate assistant, Kate Abramowitz, in discussing their findings and the new work those have led them to. Together, the trio represent three generations of scholars hoping to steer higher education in a new direction to fit a rapidly changing world.

Real Findings 

As is often the case with good research, The Real World of College evolved from previous work the authors had done at the Harvard Graduate School of Education’s Project Zero, from which Gardner launched the Good Work Project. For decades, the research center has explored various scenarios of ethics and character including the decline in the professional sense of responsibility for “good work.” The effort has produced ten books of various themes, including morality and ethics in high school students and young adults. Fischman, then just out of college, has now been working with Gardner for nearly 30 years and has co-authored a number of books and articles with him. The Real World of College is their most ambitious to date, and, while the research has a clear start and end, it is informed by and interwoven with their many years of working with students. 

“In reflection sessions with college students for our Good Work Project, we would ask them about why they were in college and what they wanted to get out of it,” said Fischman. “We were struck by how many students really didn’t know why they were there, and we were really curious about that. This was around the time the value of a college experience was being called into question, and we began to wonder how other higher education stakeholders responded to the question, ‘Why go?’”

The Real World of College establishes four ways of thinking about going to college. These mental mindsets are: Inertial: one goes to college and thinks little about being there, does not participate significantly; Transactional: one goes to college and does what (and only what) is required to get a degree and then (hopefully) secure placement in graduate school or a job; Exploratory: one goes to college intentionally to take time to learn about diverse fields of study and try out new activities; and Transformational: one goes to college to question and reflect about one’s own values and beliefs with the possibility that they will be changed, hopefully in constructive ways. 

“We were struck by how many students really didn’t know why they were in college.”

Their research showed that while few held an inertial mindset, nearly half of all students had a transactional view of college; these young persons were most concerned with grade-point averages and building their résumés and less concerned about personal and intellectual growth or expanding their understanding of the world around them.

“Students talked about academic rigor in terms of wanting to do well, getting As, not more challenging work,” said Fischman. “It was about performing well, being successful, and having those external markers of success.” 

In their transactional view of college, students were joined by parents, alumni, and trustees, but were out of synch with on-campus stakeholders like faculty, administrators and staff; the latter informants tended to view the college experience through the exploratory and transformational lenses, what one might think of as the more traditional stance. This misalignment may account for the declining rates of confidence the public has in higher education. For the authors, it was another indication that the sector was losing its grip on its reason for existence — after all, they thought, if stakeholders just want jobs, they should go directly into job-training (and résumé-building) programs.

“Nearly 80% of faculty and administrators in our sample viewed college as an opportunity for transformation, so the difference between families and campus adults was really striking and really significant,” said Abramowitz. “If students are there for one reason, which likely reflects why their parents are sending them, and faculty and administrators are designing their courses with a completely different approach in mind, everybody’s going to be unhappy.” 

Starting in 2012, Gardner and Fischman said they did not anticipate many of their findings, including what was far and away the most dominant: the prevalence of mental health issues among college students and the consistency with which all stakeholders believed this to be the number one problem in higher education today. “At the start, we didn’t ask them to rate problems,” said Fischman. “But simply to name what they thought was the biggest, and from there, mental health quickly became the number one area. It was one of the only topics that every stakeholder agreed on.” 

As rates of mental health problems among college students soared in the 2010s, Gardner and Fischman became less surprised and more curious about the origins of the problem as well as how it might relate to their other findings. They found that students not only personally experienced mental health issues but believed them to be pervasive throughout higher education. Among the distress – mainly feelings of anxiety — was a deep sense of alienation. The authors were also compelled to understand what “mental health issues” really meant to college students. 

“What does it take to say there’s a mental health problem?” asked Gardner. “I think if you did research across different societies and diverse cultures, you would find that there are very different answers to that question.” 

The most common explanation for why mental health was considered the biggest problem on campus was academic stress. In a section in the book called “What keeps you up at night: the 3 a.m. worries,” Abramowitz writes that more than half of the students interviewed reported that academic stress was the reason. More than a fifth (17%) of students raise mental health issues in relation to these academic concerns. Again, the responses revealed a fixation on performance. 

“For the most part, students talked about mental health problems relating to doing well in school, so the stress is focused again on these external markers,” said Fishman. 

The authors do not purport to have any specific training or background in mental health and lean heavily on the literature to describe its prevalence among college students. But they do posit that their prescription for reframing the purpose of higher education may have a positive impact.

“If you think that college is just about getting straight A’s, developing your own profile and getting a job, you of course are going to have stress and anxiety about meeting those milestones. But if colleges were to encourage more of an exploratory or transformational mindset, they may also address some level of the mental health issues we are seeing.”

The Work of Reframing 

In reflecting on their findings, Fishman, Gardner and Abramowitz discuss what they feel needs to be done for higher education to find its way, with an eagerness that underscores their own formative undergraduate experiences. While they discuss some concerns about Gen Z students’ preparedness to embrace the hard work of learning (one of the most frequently-used words in the responses was “mom”), the authors avoid judging the students. Instead, their analysis and recommendations are focused on the academy and its failure to adhere to, and communicate, its primary mission, indeed its primary reason for existing: effective learning. 

“We would rather students be less concerned about their grades and more transformational and exploratory in their thinking about college, but it’s hard for them when they don’t understand what the mission of their institution is – or of the sector of higher education overall for that matter,” said Gardner. 

The authors call this “mission sprawl,” which gives way to “projectitis” — the proliferation of offices and programs that, however well-intentioned, can serve to further distract and confuse students. 

The most common explanation for why mental health was considered the biggest problem on campus was academic stress. 

“In the late 19th century, when we minimized the religious missions of our traditional institutions — which people like me might have applauded at the time — we did not replace them with being a good citizen or having a well-trained mind,” said Gardner. “We replaced them with a grab-bag of these other things—most of which do not have explicit learning aspirations.” 

Fischman concurs. “Colleges have become all things to all people and in doing so, they have lost their sense of purpose. Institutions need to remind themselves and their students what they stand for.” 

The authors conclude that schools should establish a well-defined, easily understood mission that is introduced with explicit onboarding and reinforced by ensuring that any additional priority is intertwined into that overarching academic mission. In confronting the tenuous notion that college is simply a means to an end, the authors offer a new measure for what they believe is a far more lasting and valuable asset: higher education capital (HEDCAP). HEDCAP’s five constituents are the abilities to “Attend, Analyze, Reflect, Connect and Communicate.” HEDCAP encompasses key components of becoming a well-educated person – what Gardner terms higher ed’s “raison d’etre.”

The authors’ promotion of the learning mission includes a sense of thinking “outside of oneself,” a component that could obviate some of the ambiguity students have about college and might dial back the obsession with personal milestones. “You should know, as a student, that ‘I’m here because I can learn about the rest of the world, understand other people’s perspectives, and contribute something when I get into the world that will not only benefit me but benefit others as well,” said Fischman. 

Gardner is even more emphatic. “If colleges don’t increase higher education capital – being able to think and understand better — we really should close them down. Given where we are with the world, if we don’t do something to get students beyond themselves, then we have also failed, because college is the last chance to think about these things—who we are and who we might become, what the world is like, how to think better about it and act more effectively and most compassionately—in the precious years before you go full-time into the world of work.” 

Moving from “I” to “We” 

In today’s internally focused world, getting stakeholders to think more broadly is a formidable challenge, particularly for young people who are relentlessly besieged with messages to the contrary. With a team of colleagues, Fischman, Gardner and Abramowitz are now working on a new project that they hope will nudge the sector toward recognizing the collective benefits of outward thinking.

“After the book was published, we were concerned about this transactional mindset and this preoccupation with self, so we piloted our own approach to try to get students to move from ‘I’ to ‘we,’ as we call it,” said Fischman. 

For two years the researchers worked with over 150 students at four different colleges, instructing them to keep journals about difficult dilemmas. Fischman says they did not explicitly use the word “ethics” but prompted students to think about the ethical complexities of the dilemmas they described. 

“Among the thousands of students we interviewed for The Real World of College, very few talked about decisions or dilemmas that affected other people,” she said. “We wanted to increase sensitivity to the fact that there are decisions you make and behaviors you have that affect others and there are things going on in the world that may not relate to you but may need your sense of agency.” 

Another red flag raised in the book was the fact that while students reported cheating to be widespread on campus, they rated it as far less important to them than mental health and dismissed it as something they needn’t deal with or, indeed, even think about. This tracked to previous work the researchers had done with high school students (see her co-authored 2004 book, Making Good). 

“We got the sense that teenagers believed that ethics were for later. ‘As a young person, I don’t need to worry about that. And actually, when I decide to cut corners and may not do the right thing, its justified because I’m moving forward and getting to where I need to be.’” 

The notion that “ethics are for later” may seem detrimental, but Fischman believes it is an understandable response given the pressures placed on high school students to do all they can to get into the right college. In their work with college students, particularly first year students, the researchers found the reflection exercises, where students considered other people, constituted a welcome respite. 

“We found the students really appreciated having that time to reflect on the world, as it was something they would not have done otherwise,” said Abramowitz. “Many of them expressed benefits for their mental health, though that was not our primary focus.”

The journaling effort has shown promising results, and the researchers are now looking to expand their impact by working with select colleges and universities to embed their “Beyond the Self” approach within existing curriculum like first year programs or capstone experiences. The work is funded by the Kern Family Foundation, a national nonprofit dedicated to empowering young people to build flourishing lives anchored in strong character and inspired by quality education. The work includes interviewing alumni who participated in Beyond the Self programs and other initiatives focused on building sensitivity to ethics and character, in order to understand how it may have affected how they see the world, their lives and their careers. The research with alumni is part of what Fischman describes as a whole-institution approach to paving the “I” to “we”’ pathway.

“We are looking at institutions that are taking on this approach and trying to understand: Do students come to these schools prepared for this mission? What do they take away? How do they leave and what have they gained? And, ideally, what might society gain?”

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.”

LearningWell Radio in Conversation with Alex Kafka

Posted on by Dana Humphrey

The following is a transcript of LearningWell Radio’s interview with Alex Kafka on his new report, “Overcoming Student Loneliness: Strategies for Connection.“You can listen to the episode on Spotify or Apple Podcasts.

Dana Humphrey: This is LearningWell Radio, the podcast of LearningWell Magazine, covering the intersection of higher education and lifelong well being. I’m Dana Humphrey.

Marjorie Malpiede: And I’m Marjorie Malpiedie, and we’re the hosts of Learning Well Radio. 

MM: Anyone who reads the higher ed press already knows Alex Kafka. For more than two decades, the senior editor at the Chronicle of Higher Education has been bringing information and insights on the most important issues in higher ed, including student mental health and well being. And he’s done this through both his regular coverage and his special reports.

Alex joins us today to talk about a new report he has authored that digs deep into a phenomenon that has been surfacing for the past several years. Certainly before and during and after the pandemic, this sense of loneliness, Gen Z students are reporting. His report, Overcoming Student Loneliness, Strategies for Connection, is, as the title suggests, an evidence based resource for how higher education can address student loneliness, a worrisome and, as we’ll hear from our conversation, complicated issue, by using its own built-in advantages. Alex, welcome to LearningWell Radio.

Alex Kafka: Thank you, Marjorie. I’m so pleased to be with you. 

MM: I’m very excited to have you with us today. And I’m not going to lie. I am a big fan. fan of your work. And I’ve been reading your coverage for years on this topic and others, obviously. So first question, you have covered so many topics in higher ed, including student wellbeing. What made you focus specifically on loneliness? 

AK: My editors and I were talking seriously about a loneliness special report in late 22 and early 23, even before Surgeon General Murthy brought additional newsiness to the topic with his campus tour. And the topic appealed to me because it was difficult and mysterious. And that’s what I like when I’m going into a reporting project. It’s difficult in ways we’ll discuss more later, I’m sure, but fundamentally because loneliness is such a ubiquitous but elusive phenomenon. Emily Dickinson called it the horror not to be surveyed but skirted in the dark. But she, of course, did survey it beautifully and artfully, and we wanted to tackle it too. Most everyone has felt lonely at one time or another, and if you ask just about anyone what was the loneliest time of your life, they’ll have an answer for you. But it’s a puzzle because those lonely times often are not the times when one’s alone. You can be surrounded by people, even by friends, a lover, people who cherish you, respect you, enjoy your company, and still feel lonely. And we’ve all read tragic news stories about rich, popular entertainers or athletes or influencers who, it turns out, were actually abjectly miserable. And in the higher ed space, a more specific, practical mystery, Marjorie, was why once the COVID lockdown period was behind us and students were back on campus, they were still in many cases, deeply lonely, more so than ever, according to some data. So, loneliness and isolation during the quarantine and lockdown were awful, but at least it made a kind of sense. The loneliness after that was a bit of a puzzle, and as a reporter who’d been following college mental health issues for a while, I wanted to talk to experts and figure out what was going on.

MM: So let’s get right into the mystery because I agree that this is not what people think of as being by yourself or lonely. This is a different phenomenon for this generation. So as you point out, It’s not as simple as one might think. Can you talk about the different types of loneliness that in your reporting you uncovered? And one thing that really stood out for me, the fact that loneliness is not a disease, it is a brain state. 

AK: Like a lot of primal feelings, loneliness at first seems simple. And then the more you examine it, the more variegated and complicated it becomes. So it’s widespread. There are societal influences, but it’s also subjective. If you feel hungry, you’re hungry. If you feel thirsty, you’re thirsty. And if you feel lonely, you’re lonely. Jeremy Nobel, a physician and public health expert and the author of Project Unlonely, cites work by John Cassiopo the late neuroscientist at the University of Chicago. And Cassiopo interpreted loneliness fundamentally as a craving, an important psychological and neurological mechanism that prompts us to seek connection.

And I really like this thought, it really resonated in my mind that in that sense, like hunger or thirst, loneliness is a gift. We think, Oh, loneliness, how awful, but it’s also a gift because that prompt is essential to function, to live. The problematic loneliness is loneliness that goes unanswered, unaddressed. And so in that sense the epidemic of loneliness is partly a matter of education, explaining to college students, like everyone else for that matter, that loneliness is ignored at one’s peril, literally, and more broadly at the peril of society. 

MM: So I’m particularly interested in your definition, or the literature’s definition, of psychological and societal loneliness and what that means for us in higher ed.

AK: I have to attribute properly, like a good journalist here, and say this is really Jeremy Nobel’s framing from his book that I draw from. And he’s an important source in the report. So he breaks loneliness down into three fundamental categories. Psychological, societal, and existential. And he in turn, by the way, is drawing from the book. from people before him who have been studying this for decades. He doesn’t pretend to be the creator of all these categories. So yeah, let’s briefly define them. Psychological is that basic craving for connection. As he puts it, I think the wanting of that just warm and fuzzy other human, that is a lifelong thing. Societal loneliness is feeling like you don’t fit in. That you’re excluded from a group of whatever kind. And then the third kind, and this is the trickiest in some ways, and also to my mind, really interesting is the existential or spiritual loneliness. So when you talk to Nobel and other clinicians and authors and experts who have been looking at this, they say that psychological and sociological loneliness are the predominant strains that you will see among college students. 

Then, it’s interesting when you look at recent surveys you find things that are either in or adjacent to that existential or spiritual loneliness. And that’s the fundamental human condition. The bewilderment at being alive. Who am I? How did we get here? Why are we here? What’s my purpose? What do I mean to others? What do they mean to me? That kind of thing. And when you look at what students, what everyone, but including students are thinking about and worrying about things like climate change, gun culture, political polarization, malfeasance, incompetence, war, racism, et cetera, et cetera. Existential concerns are kind of part of that stew, I think, beneath the psychological and sociological loneliness.

MM: That’s a phenomenal description. And it makes me think, and I would agree with you, that this isn’t just about FOMO, right? Although it is about that too, fear of missing out. And also who’s in, who’s out and how do people look at me, either among them or outside of them. And I know we have a lot of that in our young generation, particularly exacerbated by social media, which I do want to talk about. But I would agree, this existential feeling of who am I? What is my purpose? How can I control all of these sort of outer worldly events that are happening? I think when I talk to students I hear them worry a lot about that. So I’m glad you brought it up. 

AK: I think it’s real, that feeling that the world’s going to hell in a handbasket. And, why am I trying so hard to succeed? Why am I going through all this when things are spinning so much out of control?

MM: Yeah, let’s talk about some of the causes that you identify, and I love how you talk about social media as the Borg.

AK: I’m a big Star Trek fan, so I couldn’t help it. And I mean, doesn’t that describe social media? It’s like, when you look at all those studies about people who want to escape it, but they can’t, and they must assimilate.

MM: I have to tell you that was my favorite part of the report. The way you describe that is just priceless. And I think really spot on, to say it’s a love-hate relationship simplifies it, but you talk about, and again, you go back to the evidence and what’s in the literature. I love Jean Twenge’s work on this. We’ve all seen Jonathan Haidt’s new book, The Anxious Generation. So You know, you’re very balanced and research based when you talk about this, but do you have a personal opinion on how onerous social media is to this problem of loneliness in Gen Z?

AK: Ah, so now, Marjorie, you’re trying to trick a reporter into having an opinion about something.

MM: I’m thinking it might be there.

AK: I’ll give that a shot, and it’ll probably get me into trouble just like when any reporter strays into opinion land. Jean Twenge, a hugely influential psychologist and author, put her fingers on a lot of this stuff a decade ago. And I think most of your listeners are well aware of the argument, so I won’t rehash it at length, but, the confluence of smartphone adoption and ubiquitous social media and then Professor Haidt and his new book, and it seems like every book on this topic has to be accompanied by an article in The Atlantic, right? So he had one of those and he’s updated Dr. Twenge’s thoughts and argument in a more activist vein, saying we should look at policies and legislation curtailing the use, particularly among younger kids, of smartphones and social media. And influential folks are obviously hearing and thinking about this debate. Just this week, a few days ago, Surgeon General Murthy proposed putting warning labels on social media the same way we do on cigarettes in California, Florida, and some other states. Interestingly, states that have overall a lot of political differences are all considering legislation that would rein in kids’ use of social media. So in answer to your question, I’ll stray from my reportorial comfort zone a little bit. 

While correlation is not causation, I think Twenge’s and Haidt’s arguments pack a real wallop, and I totally understand why Surgeon General Murthy and legislators and parents and teachers and school administrators are alarmed. And, I’ve thought a lot about the counter argument I mentioned in the report, a George Will column where he says, society always freaks out about new technology, whether it’s a radio or TV or internet or cell phones. But, I think that doesn’t quite hold up. Bill Maher did a great bit a couple of years ago, making a serious point in his entertaining way that cell phones, especially in tandem with social media. Bring a technological change, not just in quantity, but in kind. That this is really a little bit different. And besides the occasional glance at LinkedIn, or catching up with music camp friends on Facebook, I don’t really go in much for social media. I have other addictions like binging on Succession. But here’s where my ambivalence or confusion or reservations come in, and I realize it’s mealy mouthed and totally unhelpful.

But there are three points I want to make, and I’ll try to make them quickly. One, smartphones are woven into so many facets of our lives. That while it may well make sense to delay their use, and my wife and I did just that with our now 26-year-old twins that might just make them all the more enticing. I think about when I was a kid, Marjorie, I wasn’t allowed to watch TV except a little on Friday and Saturday nights, and that just made TV gleam in my imagination, like the Holy Grail. And pretty much every school day, I snuck over to my friend Bruce’s house to watch reruns of M. A. S. H. But I think, the forbidden fruit, whether it’s TV or social media, is always very appealing, right? And then Two, within social media, the categories are so wide and blurred. Yes, obviously heavy teen users staring at TikTok or Instagram or YouTube most of every waking hour. That’s a horror show and the opportunity costs are huge. Not just in socialization, but just in reading and pursuing other skills and passions. But social media, as you know, serves affinity groups, marginalized populations, people with disabilities. During the pandemic, in some cases, it was a real lifeline for students who felt just dreadfully isolated. And social media can reveal occupational possibilities, they blend with entertainment, streaming, and video game platforms, they offer marketplaces for niche skills, they do a lot. And so it’s a very mixed bag.

MM: Yeah.

AK: And, then the third point I’ll make, and then I’ll hush up on this, is that when it comes to cultural battles over tech, I think we’re often fighting the last war. And so I wonder if warning labels on social media will feel like the explicit lyrics on albums that Tipper Gore proposed. Where teens just laughed and rolled their eyes and bought the albums. Gosh, I think if we look back in 10 or 20 years at the possibilities and perils of, say, AI, and how that blends into the mix, some of these other debates will be dwarfed. 

MM: A couple things. One is, what I think is interesting, and it’s pointed out in your report that kids themselves would just as well give up social media if all of their friend groups did the same. So there may be some sort of organic resistance to it that we might see. What do you think?

AK: I think there’s a total organic resistance to it, and I love you can read, or maybe you’ve already read, about the study by economists showing that people would literally shell out 10, 20, 30 bucks a month to rid social media from their universes. Except, and this is where the Borg assimilation metaphor comes in, you can’t quit because so much of your career life or student life or Just the logistics of communicating with your team or your carpool or whatever are so wrapped into it. And so you can’t. But I think, educating students about some of the perils and addictive issues with social media, just like you do, tobacco and alcohol and sex education and education about anything else in the world, that might yield better results, but I don’t know. I think it’ll yield a lot of great dissertations in the next decade or two.

MM: What is it specifically about — again, the many trends and habits and favorites and whatnot — what is the direct linkage to why they’re so lonely? 

AK: So there’s a great metaphor that a journalist used in an Atlantic piece, and Jean Twenge in her new book actually references that, where the journalist says, look, it’s not that everyone who uses social media is lonely and miserable and it’s a more, Subtle connection, the way a sip of wine might loosen people up at a party and make them feel a little less shy and inhibited. For other people, it might make them too uninhibited or depressed or whatever that it can have or, alcoholic and addicted. That social media is the same way, that for most people a little bit of social media goes a long way and it’s probably okay, but then for some relatively small percent, It’s really problematic. And when you look at the surveys showing percentages of, I don’t have them in front of me, but gosh, five, 10, 15 percent, you’ve got a line of 10 students in front of you and one or two of them is addicted to something, whether that’s social media or drugs or alcohol or whatever else that’s a big concern. And if you’re wrapped up in social media, first of all, there’s all the potential abuse, bullying, exploitation, deep fake nudes, sex, blackmail stuff, the things you read about in the newspaper every day. There’s that, but short of that, there’s also just, gosh, if you’re staring at your phone five, six, seven hours a day there’s so many other things you’re not doing.

MM: And not connecting around, certainly not in a real way. Speaking of smartphones and social media I want to sneak in a question about something you reported on recently. And that was a new report, a white paper that came out on the efficacy of mental health apps for college students. Big, huge question. I was glad that you wrote this. And also glad that Our friends and colleagues actually did the white paper. This was Sarah Lipson and Dan Eisenberg and others Healthy Minds Network. And I believe the Hope Center. Alec, what do you think about that in relation to what we’re talking about today?

AK: Yeah, so what they’re doing, so these are teams from BU, UCLA, Irvine, Temple, and I hope I’m not forgetting any institution in conjunction with the Ruderman Family Foundation. And what they’re trying to do is bring some quantification and some publicly available evidence. about whether mental health apps that colleges are using are working. And there’s some evidence, they cite, for instance, a study from 2019, that the apps are in fact doing something, maybe quite a bit. But there’s not a lot of evidence out there. There’s not a lot of transparency as to how many students are using these apps, whether they stick with the apps, that’s a big question whether the apps are taking the best approaches for the student populations they’re reaching, that kind of thing. And so in this report, they first of all are pushing, I would say, college leadership to ask more questions of the app vendors as to what exactly you’re selling, how good is it, and for the hundreds of thousands of dollars that we’re paying for it in some cases what are we getting for our money. And then in the longer run, they’re urging the app vendors and colleges to share their information about All those things, how effective the apps are, how many students are reaching so that people can, hopefully pick the right ones for their circumstances. 

MM: And there’s so much promise there to your point about the sort of flip side of social media and devices. There’s so much more we need to know about how it might actually benefit students. Certainly they’re using them. And it’s, there’s the proliferation of these that certainly came around in the last few years and We’re certainly accelerated by the pandemic. Before we leave the causes of loneliness, I didn’t ask you about the pandemic, Alex. There’s so much we still don’t know and analyze in that. But what do you say about that in your report?

AK: Yeah. When I was writing about student mental health during the pandemic, a lot of experts were hypothesizing/warning that there could be something they were calling an echo pandemic, which would be a post traumatic societal phenomenon. And they were looking back at previous historical examples like World War I, the Spanish flu pandemic, things like that, and saying, hey, after these things were quote, over, they weren’t really over, that there was in some cases, upticks in depression and anxiety and suicides and all kinds of things, and they were afraid that might happen with COVID too. And at least some, I don’t think it’s that clear and I don’t think it’s really a consensus, but at least some experts think we are in that eco pandemic now, when you look at the still rising rates. of anxiety, depression, suicidal ideation, social anxiety in particular subcategory of anxiety that we are seeing the results of those lockdown and quarantine periods and, the cognitive and emotional effects of those.

MM: And you say in your report that Gen Z students are the most lonely demographic, for all the reasons we’ve been talking about but that puts this whole issue squarely at the door of colleges and universities, particularly those who care deeply about protecting student mental health. And success, because I think you point out as well in your report, this affects how people learn, how engaged they are in their college experience, etc. I wanted to ask you about something I thought was a great point in your reporting, and that is that terms matter, right? Words matter in college student mental health. And there’s always this sense of, what is something that is a serious or acute diagnosis that has to be treated in one way? And what is, to reach back to what we first started talking about, more of a state of mind or feelings. And you talk about loneliness in a way where we need to be careful not to pathologize it, right? But at the same time understand when it becomes a problem. Can you talk a little bit about that?

AK: Sure. Yeah. As we’ve discussed, the mental health problems are all too real an unbeat of statistics from healthy mind study and other surveys, loneliness percentages in the forties or fifties or even higher, depending what you look at, anxiety and depression rates in the thirties or forties climbing rates of social anxiety. And students in psychological crises need substantial care, and they need it fast. And it’s great that stigmatization of mental health challenges has declined a ton over the last couple decades. But clinicians are also worried. That everyday stress is sometimes medicalized by students and by their parents. Being a social mammal is sometimes trying. Anyone with a roommate, schoolmate, or even just family members can attest to that, right? And there are financial, logistical problems that are very real, but not medical. Not psychological. And yet too many students, counseling center directors are saying, try to solve every problem with an appointment at the counseling center. And that can be unhelpful in a couple ways. First, the counseling center can’t help them. If the problem is finance and summer job issues, you got to go to financial aid and career centers. And second, if the misguided counseling center recessions take valuable time from students who really need them, that stretches already ragged and totally understaffed counseling centers even further. 

MM: I want to then segue into sort of what schools are doing to respond to this because I do Think that this is starting to become an acknowledgement on college campuses, you know I’ve been hearing for years counseling services can’t do everything, nor should they. And so we’re seeing the rest of the community get involved in this, which I think is a good thing. When it comes to this particular issue around loneliness, what are some of the strategies that you’re seeing that might be most effective?

AK: Oh, sure. That’s the fun part of the report. After all the depressing news about causes and whatever, is that this, unlike some things colleges can actually do quite a bit about, and it doesn’t always cost that much either. There practical, just plain old fun responses, outdoor movie nights with snacks, escape rooms, food trucks, outdoor concerts, dances. Do not underestimate, I’ve been told by a couple presidents now, how much this generation that did not get their prom and junior prom nights, how much they love dances. Speed-friending preferably in conjunction with pizza. Everything goes better with pizza. Quiet craft activities for students who just don’t go in for a lot of noise and commotion. For students who do go in for a lot of noise and commotion. Crazy traditions. The one that’s pictured on the cover of the report is the Colorado School of Mines cardboard boat race. And the precedent there is also big in the GaGaBall tournaments. I had no idea what GaGaBall was until I reported this. There’s some other things too changing expectations from the outset. So that students who have a few lonely weeks at the beginning of their first year realize Hey, that’s normal, and they are not the oddballs. They’re supposed to be feeling that way. Sometimes practical nudges, like at Bryant University in Rhode Island, they give every new student a lawn chair. And have kind of a block party that first night and going on that first week. Things going on outside, right outside their dorms every night. Social gatherings around academic programs in preparation for study abroad. And then finally I love the MIT example that I cite and especially one student who I feature, and I won’t tell you too much here and spoil it, but Students who turn those existential quandaries we talked about upside down. Why are we here? How can we better serve our fellow human beings? You know, if you’re sitting alone in your room those questions can lead to misery. But if you start, like they did, a quote, big question club and get together regularly and do readings around them and invite guest lecturers and that kind of thing, that can become a very social phenomenon and really fun. So I guess, two prongs. Humanize the campus, increase empathy and peer support, but also just make campus life vibrant and fun so that the fear of missing out doesn’t happen on your phone. It happens because, or rather it happens because you’re on your phone and you’re not out the door and actually interacting with your peers. 

MM: The other thing I love that you talked about, and if you have anything else to add, please do, but this idea about, so activities are terrific, right? Some people go for it, some people might not. But this kind of cultural change where everyone on campus is sort of acknowledging the reality of this, right? Not everybody has a friend group, or friends. And professors talking about that and staff talking about that. I think that’s really cool.

AK: Yeah, I do too. That strain of the argument came from Gary Glass, I think, at Emory University. And he was saying, yeah, this generation, they’ve grown up watching syndications of friends and other sitcoms where not only do you have a couple good friends, but you’ve got a circle of six or eight of them and they’re all witty. And there’s always some. Funny story arc going on that you’re all part of. And of course, people know, hey, that’s TV. It’s not real life. And yet, when you combine that with that parallel universe on social media, where everyone looks happy and healthy and thin and smiling, that can have in the long run kind of weird effects on what you expect from your social life. 

MM: Fantastic words of advice with chock full of evidence and some great best practices. So this is definitely a report that should be read and it should be read now at a very important time. I want to make sure that our audience knows how to get the report. 

AK: Go to chronicle.com, which you should check out anyway, because it’s awesome. But then go to the store button at the top of the page on chronicle.com, and then you will see on the drop down menu reports or featured products, as well as other things like data collections, back issues. And this will be under, at the moment, I think it’s under reports and featured products. But anyway, you’ll find my report. You’ll find brilliant reports by so many of my colleagues at The Chronicle on all kinds of urgent and important issues.

MM: Thank you so much, Alex. This has been a real treat to have you on the show. Thank you so much. And we are looking forward to more from you.

AK: Great. I’ve had so much fun speaking with you and thank you Marjorie.

MM: Take care.

Ian Elsner: This has been learning while radio, a production of learning. Well, for more information about our work, go to learning well mag.org. And if you like what we’re doing, leave us a rating or review. Thanks so much for listening.

LearningWell Radio in Conversation with Dr. Wendy Suzuki

Posted on by Dana Humphrey

The following is a transcript of LearningWell Radio’s interview with Wendy Suzuki on her book “Good Anxiety.” You can listen to the episode on Spotify or Apple Podcasts.

Dana Humphrey: This is LearningWell Radio, the podcast of LearningWell magazine, covering the intersection of higher education and lifelong well-being. I’m Dana Humphrey.

Marjorie Malpiede: And I’m Marjorie Malpete, and we’re the hosts of LearningWell Radio.

DH: Dr. Wendy Suzuki is a neuroscientist at New York University, where she also serves as Dean of the College of Arts and Science. Her primary area of research is neuroplasticity, and recently her work has focused on understanding how aerobic exercise can be used to improve learning, memory, and higher cognitive abilities. She’s the author of Healthy Brain Happy Lice, a personal program to activate your brain and do everything better, and Good Anxiety, harnessing the power of the most misunderstood emotion. She’s had appearances on CBS This Morning, WNYC, Big Think the Moth, she has a TED talk, and now she’s joining us on LearningWell Radio. Wendy, thank you so much for being here today.

Wendy Suzuki: Thank you for having me, Dana. 

DH: Good Anxiety discusses how we can make everyday anxiety work for us rather than against us. And we will definitely talk more in depth about that. But the last time I saw you was at the Coalition for Transformational Education’s conference in March,

where you gave an electrifying presentation on the effect of exercise in the brain. It really set the house on fire. I have never had that much fun during a presentation at a conference. We all stood up, we went through some of the exercises that you have your students do during class. So I just wondered if you could give a bit of background on that. Why did you decide to start bringing physical activity into your classroom, and how did that process go? Were the students receptive? Did you notice a change in how they learned or how you taught them? 

WS: Yeah, this all started when I got interested in the effects of exercise on the brain because I had I had realized I wasn’t moving at all in my life and I was feeling run down and stressed and also I didn’t have friends outside of my own lab and I said I don’t know how to gain new friends but I do know that I can go to the gym and at least feel more physically strong and so I went to the gym and I ended up really changing my regular workout habits and I felt really great. And right about that time, I needed to teach a new class and I thought, oh, wouldn’t it be fun to learn about the effects of exercise on the brain since I’m noticing all these great effects on my life,

on my mood and on my memory and on my focus and it wouldn’t be fun to really dive deep with the students. And so I at developing that class. But then I found the thing that really gets me going is going to the gym and finding a great class and moving with a whole bunch of people. And so I thought, wouldn’t it be fun to actually bring exercise into the classroom? And so I immediately ran to my departmental administrator and said, hey, could I get some money for to hire an exercise instructor so I could bring exercise into the classroom? And they said, no, no, you’re you’re the teacher, you teach the class. And so I went back to my desk a little dejected and I thought maybe I’ll train to be an exercise instructor and I will teach the exercise part of the class too. So then I went back to my administrator and I said, “Hey, would you pay for me to go train how to teach exercise at the gym and then teach in the classroom?” And they said, “Yes, we will.” And so I went and I took training fitness,

uh, teaching class at the gym, and it was so much fun. And, and I, at the same time, I was developing this new class and, and I thought, wow, make, I could turn this into a study. Maybe I could test the effects or test their baseline effects of mood and reaction time before and after this class and see whether our regular workouts, which were going to be once a week, did any difference. And so this turned into a class that I called “Can Exercise Change Your Brain?” And you asked me whether it changed the classroom. I will never forget the very first day of that class that I ever taught.

It was in a classroom where I taught for 15 years, a typical classroom with lots of seats in it. All the seats had been pulled out, it was a completely empty classroom. I walked in, I was worrying head to toe Lululemon, which I usually don’t do in classroom. And I was feeling really nervous because while I’m very comfortable lecturing, I had to actually teach an exercise class to these students for the very first time. And I’ll never forget all the nervous laughter. I think they were quite scared when they saw me walked in the classroom in Lululemon and they realized, oh my God, I have to work out with her. But I must say that completely transformed to that classroom. It eliminated that invisible wall that’s always there between the talking head at the front of the classroom and all of the hopefully learning heads in the rest of the classroom. And we had such a great time. And so that’s what made me realize, oh my gosh, I’ve got to do this in my lectures. There’s no better way to, as you say, electrify or dries a room than to make everybody stand up and they don’t know exactly what’s going to happen and then they have to do a little dance to Taylor Swift.

That’s how that came to be. 

DH: It was so much fun at the conference. It really left such an amazing impression and there was quite a bit of nervous laughter when we were going through the exercises as well. Although I think it was all based on, “Gosh, I’m going to look so silly doing this.” But it was so much fun. As you alluded to, and you talk in the intro to your book about how your own anxiety about how you were feeling led you to try and experiment with ways to feel better, including exercise and nutrition. But it also led you on this path to exploring the difference and distinction between good and bad anxiety. So anxiety has bad rap. Can you explain how anxiety can be a force for good in our lives? 

WS: Yeah, so I think first and foremost, it’s really important for people to realize that anxiety is a normal human emotion. We all have it. There’s nothing abnormal about anxiety. It’s one of the more uncomfortable emotions, but in and of itself, it is part of our natural human set of emotions. But the other second thing, it’s a little bit better, is that anxiety evolved not to annoy us, but in fact, you might be surprised to learn that anxiety evolved to protect us. And good anxiety is the idea of getting back to the protective aspect of anxiety and trying to leave the bad rap, as you say, of anxiety on the doorstep. And the first important step that I’m sure everybody’s thinking about is, oh my God, there’s no way this can be good. It’s just so overwhelming. And I totally agree. Anxiety in our society today is overwhelming. The level is too high. And in fact, for most of us, too high to be protective or helpful. So a lot of my book is first showing us how to turn down the volume of anxiety note that I never say I’m going to get rid of it because you can’t it’s a normal human emotion but there are so many approaches and techniques and tools that one can use to turn the volume down and that is the first step And I think that can be helpful to everybody listening to listening to this

podcast So a few years ago. I’ll just go in a little aside here for a it. I had the opportunity to work with somebody who I, it was sort of a coach and I took a bunch of personality tests and one of the personality tests came back that I had high access to anxiety. And you get these results back and you’re reading through them and I’m like, that doesn’t sound very good. But I was walking through them with this coach and they were talking about how it actually was a good thing that it’s eyes and ears for danger that you’re talking about that when something is not quite right,

you see it, you’re expecting it. So it wasn’t all bad. So I was thinking about that so much as I read through this book about that experience of learning that anxiety can be a good thing.

DH: So, as you know, LearningWell is focused on issues around college student well-being, including student mental health. And I was struck when you were in the book talking about this relationship between stress and anxiety and resilience,

because I think resilience is a term that gets thrown around a lot when we talk about Gen Z mental health or the younger generation, they don’t have resilience, yadda yadda yadda. Can you talk about the relationship there, between stress and resilience? 

WS: Yeah, I think that’s such an important relationship because we all have stress. And I think the key element is that the stress that we all go through in our everyday modern life, that is actually the building block to our resilience and talk about flipping a bad thing into good. So the stress that you go through that you get through that can instead of just wearing you down think of it as building up a wall to your resilience and being able to get through next time even a harder thing because you got through this medium hard thing And that really points to another topic that I talk about a

lot in the book, which is mindset. How we approach our stress and our anxiety -provoking situations in our life is so strongly influenced by the mindset that we have.

Is this a terrible burden or is it a challenge that I’m going to give myself today to see whether I could reach that challenge. And in reaching it, really celebrate.

That is an achievement that I was able to attain. There’s so much in my life that I have switched in terms of just the mindset that I approach it with. It is transforming in the way that you wake up in the morning and that you approach the world. But that’s the core right there, switching your stress response into a building block for your life’s resilience.

DH: Yeah, I loved that. I think we all talk about moving from a fixed mindset to a growth mindset, and I think that’s a pretty well-known term, but I loved this idea of this activist mindset that you brought up, that you can choose to change the things in your life. 

WS: Absolutely, and it is activist, positive that I think if you’re saying, oh, I don’t know how to do it, the other way you can ease into it is use your friend and relationship network. There are, I guarantee there are people in your life that on both sides,

some that are negativity things and some that have a wonderful mindset, maybe not about everything, but about certain things and maybe about things that you have as a challenge in your life? Can you look around? I’ve had so many kind of mindset models, particularly in my science career. Being a neuroscientist is really competitive and there’s a lot of pressure around grants, but I’ve always admired those scientists, really that had fun with their science that approached everything about their work with this sense of curiosity and joy, and use that as a model if you’re not finding it easily in yourself. And I guarantee, just look around, be a little bit observant, and you will find those people to be your activist mindset /positive mindset role models.

DH: Yeah, I love that. And it’s so funny. I think it comes so naturally to some people and there are other people, probably myself included, where you definitely have to work at it. As our listeners are largely in academia, professors, student affairs professionals, administrators, those who work with students, how can they take the wisdom from your book and apply it to their work with students? 

WS: I think number one tool is particularly in the book Good Anxiety, the last third of the entire book is a toolbox to decrease your anxiety, to lower the volume on your anxiety. And all of you out there, advisors, people in student affairs, deal with stressed out, highly anxious students. It’s the age that we are working in. And they need tools to approach it. And these were designed and they were written to be actionable. And yes, all of them are science-based, but some of them are easy to use. One of my favorites that I use often in my own life is call your funniest friend.

Call the friend that makes you laugh or go visit them in their dorm room. Things that you know will put you in a better mood. That’s the quickest way to flip your anxiety.

Maybe that’s too social if you’re too deep into your anxiety, but that’s where you can turn to your favorite music, your favorite show, things that make you smile,

things that make you laugh. I even bring this into my Instagram feed that has a large number of puppies and kittens and beautiful pictures of locations and art. And no, I don’t stare at people that have better houses and better cars And I do. I stare at beautiful locations and puppies and kittens that always make me smile.

DH: I love that idea. I think one of the things that we hear all the time and we’ve heard in our work for years is specifically around faculty feeling uncomfortable about having these conversations about mental health because they are not mental health professionals and they don’t want to cross a line. One of the things I love about this book is the framing of everyday anxiety and taking that away from the clinical anxiety. I think there is this tendency specifically now with the young adult mental health crisis to pathologize normal feelings that we all have. And I think that this book does such a good job of taking that back and taking that idea of anxiety is a normal feeling that we all have. And how do we deal with it on a normal level instead of immediately taking it to a clinical perspective?

WS: Yeah, I think of it as closing the door on that clinical perspective. I don’t have an MD, so I cannot speak to clinical anxiety, but I could speak to everyday anxiety because I have plenty of experience with that. And what I would encourage all the professors and all the administrators that counsel those professors is to be personal. Have you dealt with anxiety? Maybe you dealt with certain kinds of anxiety when you were a student. Share those experiences. Nobody’s asking you to diagnose and treat somebody with clinical anxiety. But the ask is that we all need to show a higher level of empathy, because there’s much more of it out there than there ever was either when we were in school or even just five years ago, for example. And everybody can do that. Everybody can be empathetic. Everybody can share their own experiences with anxiety, funny, or serious. Both are useful. And it’s just a challenge to to think about how can I find an appropriate way to help these students? Because I know each and every faculty out there wants their students to learn. And sometimes it requires some creativity around the levels of anxiety that comes up around certainly exam time. 

DH: Sure. And I, you know, another thing I just loved is when you talk about good anxiety can lead you to do all of these amazing things. It helps push you. And there was this feeling in the book of you can harness that anxiety, that good anxiety. 

WS: Exactly. What I like to describe is a three-step process to get to good anxiety.

One is to learn how to turn the volume down in your own anxiety. Nobody can function particularly well when anxiety is too high. So that’s where the movement, walking,

a great walk is a quick, immediate way to decrease your anxiety levels. And this is not a wives’ tale. This is from clinical studies showing that a 10 -minute walk can decrease your anxiety levels, breath work is one of the fastest ways also to quell your anxiety, and then all the tools in the last third of the book. Second, we haven’t talked about the second step of good anxiety and it’s a really important one,

which is understanding why you might be having these feelings of fear or worry that is the definition of anxiety. And when you ask yourself that, where does that get you? That flips you over to the reason for that worry, which is your values, the things that you hold dear. So I might be super, super worried about money and my next paycheck and whether I’m gonna pay for college or can I buy house that I want to buy and you could be subsumed with anxiety, but it says that your kind of financial stability is very important to you. There’s nothing wrong with that. And it’s, in fact, it’s useful to understand what you hold very dear to you, whether it’s financial stability, nothing wrong with that, your relationships, maybe there’s a lot of anxiety around, around friends or family members, whether it’s your job, of course, that means worry about job, means that you want to do your job, that you want to be seen, and you want to do a great job. Often on the flip side of that worry is something beautiful that you hold dear, and that also was my personal realization as I was writing the book, and it really does help me flip the story on that fear or that worry. That still comes up normally, I’m a normal human being, but it’s, oh yeah, I have always just needed a certain level of financial stability or a certain kind of group of friends to feel good.

And then the third step is to transform your anxiety into a gift or superpower and that is the flip to good anxiety. And the easiest example is turning a catastrophizing what if list that we all have had in our brain into a to -do list.

And this takes advantage of the fact that your what if lists aren’t about irrelevant things. They’re about very relevant things in your life. And flipping it to a to do list makes you more productive and uses that worry about things that you hold dear and puts it to use.

So that’s my favorite and easiest-to-apply superpower of anxiety, which is turning a what if list into a to do list. 

DH: I definitely will be using that one because first of all, I love the word catastrophizing. I used it all the time, but I have a tendency towards that. I will definitely use that going forward. I also love lists, but I just wanted to quickly circle back because I think this idea of reflecting and understanding yourself and who you are and what makes you tick is such an important piece of this. So I really appreciate everything you said about that and what drives you and what drives your anxiety. But overall, I just really want to say thank you so much for this book. It was such a wonderful tool, and I will definitely be passing it along. I encourage all of our listeners to read it, but also to look at your TED Talk and, self-promotional plug, to watch your incredible presentation at the Coalition for Transformational Education’s conference because it was truly a highlight. Thank you so much, Wendy, for coming to join us on LearningWell Radio. 

WS: Thank you so much for having me, Dana. It was a pleasure. 

Ian Elsner: This has been LearningWell Radio, a production of LearningWell. For more information about our work, go to learningwellmag.org. And if you like what we’re doing, leave us a rating or review. Thanks so much for listening.