Category: Mental Health

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

A Just Design

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Understanding how young graduates of color experience their predominantly White workplaces is a critical part of creating flourishing cultures within increasingly diverse work environments.  As corporations and organizations continue to work at this with varying success, the Steve Fund has released a new report that can help guide their efforts.  

In “Supporting the Successful Transition of Young People of Color into the Workforce,” The Steve Fund surveyed 160 young professionals of color on cultural dynamics that affect their wellbeing and, as an extension, their job performance, satisfaction, and retention. The results showed that half of those surveyed reported experiencing microaggressions at their places of employment; and half said they do not feel a sense of inclusion or belonging. These and other findings send a strong message to employers about the DEI work that lies ahead, despite increased efforts on the part of employers to attract and retain professionals of color. 

“We know that employers face challenges reaching recruitment and retention goals and young people of color face challenges transitioning into the workforce,” said Evan Rose, president and co-founder of the Steve Fund, the nation’s leading organization focused on supporting the mental health and emotional wellbeing of young people of color.  “These interrelated challenges present us with an opportunity to leverage the talents of a diverse workforce for growth and support young employees of color in inclusive and culturally responsive ways.”

In addition to the survey findings, the new report outlines a detailed framework for how employers can respond to what young professionals of color are reporting while creating more inclusive workplaces that will help attract and retain young people of color.  Like the “Equity in Mental Health Framework,” which has helped colleges and universities customize strategies that support the mental health of college students of color, the Steve Fund has taken a similar approach for young people transitioning into the workforce, helping employers better prepare for them with tools and resources that foster equity, inclusion, accountability, and mental health.  

“A key benefit to this work is that it connects what colleges and universities are doing to support the mental health and wellbeing of students of color with what employers want and need to do in the workplace,” said Dr. Paula Johnson, president of Wellesley College, a liberal arts college that has been a leader in inclusive excellence, with a focus on students’ mental health. “By drawing those connections and building on the mutual learning that results, we can work to maintain the gains we’ve made with young people of color who enter work environments that may hamper their sense of belonging and impede their ability to thrive.”

Stress, Belonging, and Mental Health

Marcus had been a few months into his first job out of college when he was asked to join his boss and a few other colleagues for lunch.  He remembers being excited to be included among the group of executives and was feeling good about the way he had handled himself.  Then, one of the executives complimented him on being articulate, saying, as if with surprise, “Wow, you really have an excellent vocabulary.” Marcus, who is Black, felt the familiar sting.  “After that, I was completely deflated,” he said.  “I just wanted to get out of there.”  Not long after the incident, he switched jobs. 

An underlying issue that influences these findings is the lack of diversity within the corporate workforce.

Unfortunately, Marcus’ experience is all too common as the Steve Fund survey bears out. Participants were asked to respond to questions relating to four key workplace dynamics: perception of workplace discrimination; experiences of isolation and belonging; need for psychological safety; and importance of cultural competence.   Among the findings, 50% reported experiencing microaggressions, 30% said work stress impacts their emotional wellness, 50% said they don’t feel a sense of inclusion and belonging at their place of employment, and 30% reported spending time looking for another job.   

Other findings are instructive in helping employers understand where, specifically, professionals of color are looking for change.  Half of young professionals said that management doesn’t foster a workplace that allows employees to be themselves; half also report not knowing where to go if they experience discrimination; and 41% said they do not have access to culturally competent mental health resources.  One in three young employees does not feel emotionally supported at work.

An underlying issue that influences these findings is the lack of diversity within the corporate workforce—a tenacious problem that leaders throughout the country are continuing to grapple with.  According to the report, Blacks make up about 10% of college degree holders, but only 3.2% of executives/senior level managers.  Employees of color also have high attrition rates. People of color and younger employees were more likely to have quit their jobs in 2021; feeling disrespected was a key reason for leaving.  The report cites more than three in ten young employees of color (Black and Latinx) experience discrimination at work, leading to increased levels of stress, anxiety, and hopelessness.  

The upside of creating workplaces that disrupt these trends is not lost on competitive companies, which is why organizations are reaching out to sources like the Steve Fund for help. The report cites research showing that workplaces that cultivate a culture of belonging experience higher levels of creativity, innovation, and profitability.  Employees who feel emotionally supported at work are less likely to experience mental health symptoms, less likely to underperform, have higher job satisfaction, and are more likely to stay at their companies. 

“Marcus, who is Black, felt the familiar sting. ‘After that, I was completely deflated,’ he said. ‘I just wanted to get out of there.’ Not long after the incident, he switched jobs.”

“It’s pretty simple,” said Dr. Jessica Isom. “Any time a person cares about something and is invested in something, they are going to show up better as an individual, contribute better as a team member, and overall contribute to a better outcome. That has to be grounded in what we all need as humans, which are genuine, authentic interactions. That’s what we thrive on.  And I think everybody can appreciate that.”  Isom said the absence of those positive interactions in the workplace, coupled with mental health strains brought on by systemic racism, cause young professionals of color to protect themselves by leaving. 

Dr. Isom is a board-certified community psychiatrist and one of the Steve Fund’s multicultural mental health experts. She holds a faculty role at the Yale School of Medicine, where she also trained, and co-directs the Social Justice and Health Equity Curriculum (SJHE), addressing workforce development of psychiatrists to address mental health disparities.  

“Conversations around building diverse workplaces tend to focus on desiring diversity, which is really focused on recruitment, the idea of inviting people in,” she said. “What we need to be thinking about is how to be a good host, and that means understanding who you are inviting in and what their needs are.”  

Tracy Burns, chief executive officer of the Northeast Human Resources Association (NEHRA), agrees that as earnest as employers are to attract diverse talent, more focus needs to be placed on how that talent is received and how those employees of color experience workplace cultures.  “Efforts to attract young professionals of color do not end when the offer is accepted. Employers need to build a comprehensive and sustainable approach that takes into consideration the “whole person” and fosters an environment where differences are recognized, respected, and even celebrated. This report offers both critical data that all employers should be aware of as well as concrete recommendations that can help direct your DEI efforts towards a more meaningful outcome.”

“(This work) has to be grounded in what we all need as humans, which are genuine, authentic interactions. That’s what we thrive on. And I think everybody can appreciate that.”

The Steve Fund report recommends a myriad of strategies, ranging from overarching principles like weaving mental health and racial equity into the corporate blueprint and empowering leadership to support healthy workplaces to specific strategies that address each of the issues uncovered in the survey.  These include equipping managers to make wellness at work an everyday priority; investing in mentoring at every stage in career development; and creating “wellness mentors” who are peers trained by multicultural mental health experts to provide culturally competent support and connect employees to resources.  

Dr. Isom provides an example of changes employers can make as she imagines a different outcome for Marcus and his boss at the corporate lunch.  “One of the recommendations in the report is about building a senior leadership bench that is able to facilitate the progression of young people of color.  It is even more important that individuals in leadership positions reduce their level of obliviousness to their own experiences and then arm themselves with what’s necessary to support a young person of color throughout their journey.  Because of their power and influence, their actions will have a ripple effect throughout the whole organization.”   

The Steve Fund’s mission is to promote the mental health and emotional wellbeing of young people of color as they transition from adolescence into higher education, throughout their higher education experience, and as they transition into the workforce so they can attain personal, academic, and career success and achieve their full potential. The Steve Fund works with colleges and universities, nonprofits, researchers, mental health experts, families, and young people to promote programs and strategies that build understanding and assistance for the mental and emotional health of the nation’s young people of color.

The chair of the department wasn’t herself. This was clear to her advisees, who noticed their professor becoming disengaged and disorganized, and inconsistent in following through with paperwork and information. They suspected it might have something to do with the campus tragedy: A student in one of the professor’s classes had died by suicide earlier in the year, and she was taking it hard.

“I wanted to tell her how sorry I was, but I didn’t want to make her more upset,” said a sophomore advisee. “So, I found other ways to get the information instead of bothering her.”

There is much concern these days about the mental health of college students, and with good reason. During the 2020–2021 school year, more than 60% of college students matched the criteria for at least one mental health problem, according to a study by the Healthy Minds Network (HMN), and meeting demands for treatment is a challenge for counseling centers. 

Less discussed, however, is the mental health of the faculty and staff. As the adults who see the students regularly, they are uniquely positioned to see whether their students are thriving, or seem out of sorts, or even attending class consistently. Which is an added stressor in work upended by the pandemic, on a career path already paved with unusual professional strain.

 “There’s an old saying, ‘A good teacher is like a candle—it consumes itself to light the way for others,’” said a sociology professor in Washington, D.C. “I don’t think whoever coined that phrase had this kind of ‘consuming’ in mind.” 

These days, faculty members are consumed with whether the students are okay, why they aren’t showing up for class, and how to handle the deluge of requests for accommodations, extensions, and exceptions. Recent political, racial, and harassment tensions have brought not just campus unrest, but also inquiries, investigations, and lawsuits. Many professors’ own work and research went dead in the water with COVID. The sociology professor counted four colleagues who’d either retired early in the wake of COVID or left teaching for the private sector, citing better pay and a more sane work-life balance. “Most of the burnout I’m hearing about doesn’t even have much to do with teaching itself.”

Or as one English department head put it, “The job you’re responsible for today is not the same job you got hired for 20 years ago.”

Studying the teachers: Who’s supporting the supporters?

After its survey of student mental health, HMN partnered with the Boston University School of Public Health (BUSPH) and the Mary Christie Institute (MCI) on a survey of faculty perspectives on the state of student mental and behavioral health. Findings published in 2022 show that about 80% of faculty members reported having had conversations in the past year with students about their mental health. And one in five reported that supporting students in emotional distress has taken a toll on their own mental health. 

“Classroom environments are one of the only places that every student is actually present. So, the vast majority of faculty are in this role of contact in some capacity,” said Sarah Lipson, an associate professor at BUSPH and a principal investigator of the study. “It was really important to have data to say we know that faculty are already playing a role in supporting student mental health; we no longer need to guess as to whether or not that’s happening. And I think probably without data we would underestimate how common it is.” 

“There’s an old saying, ‘A good teacher is like a candle—it consumes itself to light the way for others,’ I don’t think whoever coined that phrase had this kind of ‘consuming’ in mind.”

It isn’t surprising that faculty members report feeling like their work goes well beyond typical job hours and boundaries; student expectations of faculty extend further than the classroom. According to a Student Voice survey by College Pulse with Inside Higher Ed, students are looking to their professors for more than course content. More than half sought introductions to people working in their fields of interest, while 45% wanted professors to hear them on personal matters and to consider making accommodations because of them; and 28% hoped for help navigating college life. 

Navigating college life can cover a lot of ground for an unhappy student looking for a helping hand. Last fall, a professor at Texas Christian University received a disturbing email from a student saying thank you for everything the professor had done for him, but closing by saying he was going to jump off a parking garage. TCU had lost a student in a similar way a few years before, and kicked into emergency mode trying to locate the student and stake out all the possible garages. As it turns out, the student’s walking route toward the football stadium garage passed the counseling center where he’d just begun an on-campus IOP (Intensive Outpatient Program). He made a spontaneous decision to go into the counseling center instead, said Eric Wood, director of mental health counseling at TCU—a significant benefit to having an on-campus IOP. Still, the email and frantic galvanizing was a shot of adrenaline that carries the lasting weight of stress and responsibility—pressure felt by faculty and staff, and of course, counselors.

Greg Eells was the beloved director of Cornell University’s counseling center for more than 15 years. In March of 2019, he left to take a similar position at the University of Pennsylvania. His marching orders there: to increase capacity; decrease the time between a first consultation and a first counseling appointment; better distinguish short-term care, long-term care, and other kinds of wellness care; and expand the availability of phone, video, texting and app-based technologies that can be accessed anywhere, at any time, to support students in crisis. Eells also taught both graduate and undergraduate students in courses on counseling and psychology. No small balancing act, but he was a known superstar. Eells had also served as chair of the Mental Health Section of the American College Health Association, and won the Association for University and College Counseling Center Director’s Award for Excellence. 

The September after his move, both campuses were shocked to learn that he’d jumped to his death from a building near his new home in Philadelphia. His suicide devastated colleagues, and sparked soul-searching about the pressures of being a campus therapist, a constant watchdog. It also opened up a thoughtful dialogue on expectations we hold of the people looked upon to always be the strongest in the room.

An editorial in The Daily Pennsylvanian expressed well the pressure on caregivers to have it all together, all the time. 

“The capacity of helpers to give sound advice, to listen attentively, and to go out of their way to help others leads us to believe they must be healthy themselves. The qualities we attribute to the helpers in our lives ultimately feed into the assumption they are immune to the problems and emotions we all face,” the editorial wrote. “While it may be easy to assume that helpers are invincible, it’s also dangerous. It’s one of the reasons we don’t think to check in with them and don’t remind ourselves that they’re human, too. People who give a lot of themselves to help others can experience pain, love, and hurt as we all do.”

COVID habits and harms 

It’s been well documented that COVID was a strange and challenging time for education. From the university professor’s standpoint, it was a two-headed beast: learning to host classes online, from your side of the unfamiliar platform, and trying to remain connected with the struggling people in the squares on the other side. Being a faculty member during COVID meant having students who may or may not show up for class, and not knowing why. It meant not knowing who was living on campus or off, with or without a decent support network (or wifi network). It meant all the complicated communications that come with masking, especially hard for students with hearing loss or for whom English isn’t a first language. And now, post-COVID, it means contending with lackluster student commitment, and not knowing how much of the ongoing absenteeism, missing skills, and requests for grade leniency should be excused with accommodations. 

“One of the ancillary effects many of my colleagues talk about is that students don’t seem to believe in deadlines anymore, and it’s like the time online made it seem as though you don’t really have to come to campus anymore,” said John Hess, a senior lecturer in the English department at UMass Boston. He lost his youngest brother early during the pandemic, and was very empathetic to COVID’s effects on students and their families. “The faculty really, really care a great deal. They worry about their students and are very committed to student success. And so, when students don’t come to class, or when they don’t get the work done on time, it’s not just that it annoys us; it’s that they’re cheating themselves and missing out.”

Professors were also a natural target for student frustration during the pandemic. After all, they were the single point of official school contact via squares on a computer. 

“During the midst of COVID, you definitely saw a lot of high expectation of instant responses and a lot of demands, for lack of a better word, about how things should be,” said Eric Wood, director of TCU’s counseling center. “There was a lot of pressure for faculty and administration to know all the answers. Everyone was scrambling, and students would say, ‘You should know the answer.’ It’s a global pandemic. But kids were expecting immediate support and help.”

And if professors weren’t able to provide answers or respond in a satisfying way, their ratings went down—ratings that are taken into consideration for performance reviews and tenure. 

“Anonymous reviews can be brutal,” said David Kroll, professor of Pharmacology and director of Master’s & Certificate Programs at University of Colorado Skaggs School of Pharmacy & Pharmaceutical Sciences. Kroll, a sometime contributor to Forbes magazine, wrote a 2013 article “Top 10 reasons Why Being a University Professor is a Stressful Job.” Anonymous reviews—which influence everything from tenure, publication, and grant applications—were one of them, as was the business of securing funding for one’s research, which COVID has only exacerbated. 

Professors were also a natural target for student frustration during the pandemic. After all, they were the single point of official school contact via squares on a computer.

“Faculty are expected to bring in grant funding for their own research. Research flatlined during COVID. You have your research team, you have your lab, and all of a sudden, you can’t do any of it. If another university is managing to do it, then you are at a competitive disadvantage,” he said. “And funding is an issue that has gotten worse since then because of the rise in costs. So, they also have a financial pressure that’s a barrier to the tenure process. We lost someone recently because they couldn’t get funding for their research. Being a faculty member in the sciences is like being a small business owner.”

Wellness in the sciences and beyond

The sciences have unique pressures, based on funding and research-related outcomes. This in part prompted eLife, a global nonprofit committed to improving the way research is reviewed and communicated, to undertake a 2020 report on mental health in academia. The report focused on those who support colleagues struggling with their mental health. Of 1,500 faculty members surveyed at varying roles and levels of seniority, two-thirds of respondents said they had supported two or more coworkers who were struggling. Of those who identified as being early-career research academics, 47% said they were struggling with their own mental health at the same time. Of more senior respondents, nearly 25% said they were struggling themselves.

“I am repeatedly frustrated by my (often male) colleagues’ stated belief that ‘there is no mental health problem’ at our institution,” wrote one female mid-career respondent in the survey. “They don’t know about it because their trainees come to me, not to them, with their issues. I receive no institutional recognition for this role.”

In an essay that accompanied the report, an associate professor at the Brain Mind Institute at the Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne in Lausanne, Switzerland wrote with striking honesty about the stress and mental health challenges that contributed to two heart attacks. He was not yet 50 years old. 

“As young scientists taking on a faculty position, we quickly transition from being a team member to a team leader; from never worrying about securing funding to being overwhelmed with grant deadlines; from managing a single project to planning and guiding the work and careers of several students and post-docs; from worrying about ourselves to being absorbed in worrying about everything except our wellness. The great majority of us have never developed a course or taught classes on our own, yet we are all expected to assume these responsibilities,” wrote Hilal A. Lashuel, associate professor and director of the Laboratory of Molecular and Chemical Biology of Neurodegeneration. 

“The life of a professor is a constant balancing act, where we try to juggle personal and professional responsibilities under the pervasive stress of managing expectations in an often hypercompetitive culture. There is always a fear that we may drop the ball, a sense that if that were to happen, we would be alone and the only one to blame,” he said. 

Climbing with no clear footing

Achieving tenure is, for most professors, the natural progression and Holy Grail. Tenure track positions are hard to secure; they don’t open up very often, and they represent a financial and professional security that’s hard to replicate in other industries. And yet, it’s an elusive and constantly moving target. This is why, COVID aside, it’s a career path paved with unusually high stress and unpredictability.

“The importance of tenure can’t be overstated. That sort of freedom is remarkable. Pre-tenure, your entire life is centered on getting tenure, in terms of your research, however that’s defined. That is the central focus of your life. Everything counts, but you never know exactly what the bar is, even if it’s explained to you. There are no real guarantees,” explained one music department chair at a highly selective university. “It’s ultimately a question of how you are viewed by other people in your field. What’s your personal reputation? And it really has very little to do with your teaching, per se. If you are an amazing researcher and a terrible teacher, you will still get tenure. If you’re a mediocre researcher and a wonderful teacher, you will not get tenure.” 

Or, as another professor put it, once you have tenure, you’re free to finally speak your mind.

But the shine on tenure is seeing some tarnish these days, with the nation’s political climate impacting freedom of speech in academia. Even back in 2013, Kroll included it on his Top 10 list for Forbes, and he said it’s even more true today. 

“We cannot take care of our students if we do not learn how to take care of ourselves.”

“The political climate is attacking academic freedoms, minimizing the protections of tenure. Universities are finding ways of getting rid of people whose views they don’t agree with,” Kroll said. “I know faculty members who’ve decided they’d rather work in the private sector for that reason.”

If you are a faculty member who then gets asked to be a department head, you have an entirely new learning curve ahead—and you are largely on your own. Learning to become an administrator is not something professors are born knowing how to do, and there’s rarely instruction or mentoring.

“Becoming an administrator is an entirely different skill set in a career where you’re not trained to do this,” explained the music department chair. “Suddenly, overnight, you’re a manager. The first couple of years I made mistakes, or just approaches that were not productive, so I’ve learned what does and what does not work. Truly on-the-job training. Some larger departments are able to have associate chairs and steps to start to train their faculty. But if you’re a small department, you usually don’t have that option.”

His learning curve included a lot of travel for fundraising, a lot of communication around the Black Lives Matter and Me Too movements, and being the department’s point person on about 40 cases in litigation, going back through events of the past 15 years. “As luck would have it, for me, there were additional stressors that are particular to this moment in history, even before the pandemic. I was completely burned out, and I was overdue for a break,” he said. He ended up taking an emergency sabbatical. “A lot of hard aspects of teaching have nothing to do with teaching. And it wears you down.”

Supportive solutions

Many institutions continue to offer expanded and innovative mental health benefits and services to faculty and administration—though unlike students, in most cases, they need to travel beyond the campus to take advantage of them. It’s not as if a professor is likely to sit elbow-to-elbow with their students in the Counseling and Psychological Services (CAPS) office, waiting to meet with a counselor who is their own colleague at the school. Some universities have changed their offerings to include an in-house Employee Assistance Program (EAP), or a personalized referral service to identify local counselors who have strength in a desired specialty. 

But the most pressing request identified by the BUSPH survey is for training in being an effective supporter, as 73% of faculty say they would welcome additional professional development on the topic of student mental health. Responses make clear that faculty feel a responsibility to help students dealing with mental health concerns, which contradicts a long-held assumption that faculty do not see this as “their job.” Additionally, peer support and ambassador programs that involve training staff and faculty would help them recognize and respond to mental health crises in their colleagues.

But at the end of the day, it’s up to the individual to be willing to reach out for help. 

“As faculty, we cannot take care of our students,” wrote Hilal A Lashuel of Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne, “if we do not learn how to take care of ourselves.”