An estimated one in six Americans experience a diagnosable mental health disorder in any given year, and 18 to 25 year olds have the highest prevalence of mental illness (22%), according to the National Institute of Mental Health. About 40% of students say they have experienced depression so acute it was hard for them to function, with another 60% saying they have experienced overwhelming anxiety, according to a survey of more than 63,000 students at 92 schools nationwide by the American College Health Association. In many cases, early intervention can mean all the difference.
A look at the numbers shows intervention resources are needed
Substance abuse is on the rise, according to the National Institute of Drug Abuse — a reality which has institution leaders in places like Washington, Colorado and California, where marijuana has been legalized, particularly concerned with that the corner store that recently closed across from campus will become pot shop. Meanwhile, data show full-time college students are twice as likely to abuse Adderall, a medication used to treat attention deficit disorder, than their peers who are not in college, while institutions also are contending with the opioid crisis.
And, according to Jacqueline Spiegel, a professor at Midwestern University and a trustee of the Physician's Assistant Foundation who spoke during the American Association of Community Colleges annual meeting this week in Dallas, the onset of schizophrenia is typically the age of the traditional college student.
Community colleges are one of the largest providers of postsecondary education to those who are or have been incarcerated, and research has shown that the prevalence of mental health disorders is higher in this group than among the general population. For Jackson Phelan, president and CEO of Jackson College in Southeast Michigan, the college’s significant work with the prison population was one of the large motivators for getting staff trained in mental health triaging, promoting a technique known as mental health first aid to help faculty members, staff and students proactively identify and address signs of mental distress in themselves and among their peers.
“We are re-designing the business model of our institution” to focus on an approach around “securing the whole human,” said Phelan, who added that federal and state governments are “walking away from their responsibilities” in education and overall human development.
“As we zero in on the retention piece, we realize if students are hungry, if they haven’t slept last night, if they have some mental health concerns, you’re not going to retain them, and you’re definitely not going to get them through to graduation,” he said. At Jackson College, where there are about 500 residential students in addition to about 6,500 commuter students, “there were two to three [times] students actually took action to end their lives in the residence halls,” which Phelan said was “two to three too many.”
Considering different approaches
Phelan and his entire administrative staff underwent Mental Health First Aid certification training and certification to figure out how to better meet the needs of students, faculty members and staff on campus who may be struggling with mental health issues but don’t know where to turn for help. The initiative, which is managed by the National Council for Behavioral Health, seeks to help laypeople better understand, respond to and identify mental illness and how to deal with crisis. The certification process teaches individuals to assess risk, listen non-judgmentally, give reassurance and information, encourage appropriate professional help, encourage self-help, among other support strategies.
At Jackson College, this focus on addressing mental health concerns led to the creation of a new Oasis Center for students and staff to utilize. It provides a space where students and staff can meet with licensed counselors who have office hours at the center, or just simply come in and relax. Most importantly, the center provides aggregated data back to Phelan and the leadership team to give them an indication of the kinds of issues that need to be addressed on campus.
At Gateway Technical College in Wisconsin, administrators have taken a more holistic approach to intervention, said Tammi Summers, dean of learning success. Instead of having counselors who were generalists, the college leadership decided to have student support counselors who are integrated into every aspect of student life. They teach one credit personal and professional success classes that many students opt into just to meet credit requirements, they show up at events organized by student life just to mingle, and they even do “roll-ups” on students with Summers facilitating an introduction in the hallway “to normalize the conversations” outside of an office space and take some of the work of finding them to follow up out of students’ hands.
“What I’ve been doing is moving them around to [different areas of the campus] to do not only classroom presentations, but also in those centers to have walk-in hours and ‘get to know the counselor’ hours,” she said, citing statistics that sixty-four percent of young adults who don’t persist through college say they stopped attending because of a mental health-related reason, and 40% of those never sought help.
“There’s one stress on top of another, on top of another — cumulative stress, and boom, now we’re at crisis level,” Spiegel said.