As higher education institutions grapple with how to best provide mental health support for their constituents, researchers are analyzing this multi-layered issue and offering possible solutions. See below for recent articles on this broad topic.
How colleges and universities are rising to the challenge of supporting students emotionally and psychologically
By Ken Budd
It takes a student with the will to confront a difficult problem. It takes a friend who offers encouragement, a faculty member who provides guidance, a counselor who offers assistance. It takes courage, compassion, and strength.
The need for this campus-wide support network has never been higher. Seventy percent of students say they have struggled with mental health issues since starting college, a March 2024 U.S. News/Generation Lab survey found. In the 2022–23 Healthy Minds Network’s annual student survey, 41 percent of college students screened positive for major or moderate depression, 36 percent screened positive for major or moderate anxiety, and 14 percent said they had seriously considered suicide.
Another statistic, however, offers hope. The number of students participating in counseling increased from 30 percent to 37 percent between 2020 and 2022, according to a study of Healthy Minds survey data. Students are seeking aid—and campuses are rising to the mental-health moment. Here are some ways that they are helping students with emotional and psychological challenges ranging from building resilience to coping with grief.
By Adam Burke
Beyond figuring out how to do laundry or which classes to take, today’s college students must navigate a gauntlet of challenges their parents never imagined. For one, student loan debt continues to be a major concern. In addition, while the COVID–19 pandemic contributed to feelings of isolation and loneliness, research suggests that the growing use of social media and other technologies among college students is exacerbating the problem. Then there is AI, with a 2024 BestColleges survey finding that 53 percent of college students “are worried about the impacts of AI on the workforce.”
Living with these kinds of challenges day in and day out can add to anxiety, depression, academic underperformance, a struggle to find meaning, and the decision to drop out. A study using data from the Healthy Minds Network’s annual student survey found a 50 percent increase from 2013 to 2021 in the prevalence of mental health issues—including anxiety, depression, and suicidal ideation—among US undergraduate and graduate students. Although the prevalence of these issues rose for all racial and ethnic groups during this time, students of color used mental health services the least, according to the study.
Given the number of challenges facing students today, colleges and universities need to employ a range of creative solutions to support student success. These should entail a holistic approach that considers overall well-being: if we help students flourish in life, we will also help them succeed academically. I saw the reality of this firsthand with my holistic academic success course, one of the offerings of the Holistic Health Studies (HHS) program at San Francisco State University (SFSU).
Ready to Help: More than three million people nationwide have been trained in Mental Health First Aid. To learn more, go to mentalhealthfirstaid.org.
University of North Carolina
Chapel Hill, North Carolina
Sam Deal had noticed an occasional bandage on his colleague’s hand. The coworker claimed it was a burn injury from a cooking mishap, but the wound kept recurring. Deal, a facilities manager in the School of Social Work at the University of North Carolina (UNC) at Chapel Hill, suspected self-harm and that the bandage was a cry for help.
Deal’s suspicions were informed not only by personal experience with a family member but also by his training in Mental Health First Aid (MHFA), a course that teaches faculty, staff, and students how to “identify, understand, and respond to signs of mental illnesses and substance use disorders.” Developed by the National Council of Mental Well-Being, the MHFA course is offered by the School of Social Work’s Behavioral Health Springboard (a program that provides health-related programming and assists other organizations with programming). Instructors, who receive training from the National Council for Mental Wellbeing, include UNC-Chapel Hill staff and faculty in the School of Social Work, School of Nursing, School of Pharmacy, School of Education, and School of Medicine.
Not long after receiving training, Deal invited the coworker to lunch, followed by a walk, and shared his concerns.
“The floodgates opened,” he says of his colleague’s response. The coworker had struggled for years with emotional and physical abuse, and the self-inflicted burns were an attempt to mask the internal pain. After their talk, Deal contacted his MHFA coordinator, who quickly shared free county and state resources (coordinators help with the logistics of offering the MHFA course). Deal’s coworker accepted the assistance, began seeing a counselor, and is now thriving professionally and personally.
UNC-Chapel Hill has offered the course since 2015; more than a thousand faculty members, staff, and students voluntarily participated in 2022 alone. Some enroll individually, while others participate as part of a group: the UNC-Chapel Hill library staff, for example, underwent group training. Library staff observe numerous students during their workdays; the training might help them to spot students who are struggling emotionally. Once participants complete the course, they are certified in MHFA for three years (and they can retake the course to become recertified).
Participants learn a variety of mental health warning signs (for example, changes to typical behaviors, such as increased sleeping and decreased eating) along with “how to approach people and how to respond and what resources you can recommend,” says Alicia Freeman, the MHFA program manager at UNC-Chapel Hill and a licensed clinical mental health counselor and addictions specialist. Many participants say that MHFA has not only helped them identify students and colleagues struggling with mental health issues but also family members and even strangers.
“I’ve had faculty and staff say that since COVID, it just seems like everybody is under more stress and experiencing more mental health [challenges],” Freeman says. “People want to be informed and better equipped to support the community.”
The course begins with two hours of self-paced online work, followed by five and a half hours of live course sessions. Some sessions are virtual, others are in person, and they’re available throughout the week, including evenings and Saturdays. That flexibility helps students juggle the training with classes and extracurricular activities. Zoe Anne Biebesheimer, a senior majoring in human development and family science, took the training in 2023. It was required for a student organization called LSN (Listen, Support, Navigate), a peer group that monitors chats on the Heels Care Network, a UNC-Chapel Hill mental health website.
“It was a great way to build my confidence in terms of how to approach certain situations and how to begin certain tough conversations regarding mental health challenges,” says Biebesheimer, who’s interested in becoming an MHFA instructor. “The training was helpful in giving me a baseline for assessing risk and assisting peers.”
Deal is equally enthusiastic. Since receiving his initial instruction in 2016, he has twice retaken the course to remain certified.
“Each time, I’ve learned something new and taken away a better understanding of the mental health challenges that so many in our society deal with,” he says. “Had it not been for this training, I might have never given a second thought to the recurrence of my colleague’s injuries.”
Georgetown University
Washington, District of Columbia
At the start of each semester, associate biology professor Heidi Elmendorf shares information with her students that goes far beyond the syllabus. She tells them about her struggles with depression, and sharing that vulnerability, she believes, changes the dynamics of her course, Foundations in Biology. Instead of a detached, me-and-them, professor-and-student relationship, she says, the class becomes an “us.” Elmendorf then asks students to take an anonymous mental health survey, the results of which guide the semester’s discussions and students’ research paper topics. As she notes in the course description, Elmendorf hopes the class gives students “a sense of comfort as a community” and “unexpected resources for coping.”
If this doesn’t sound like a standard undergraduate biology course, there’s a reason: it’s not. Foundations in Biology is an Engelhard Course, which is part of Georgetown’s Engelhard Project for Connecting Life and Learning. Supported by an endowment from the Charles Engelhard Foundation, the project’s primary function is to help integrate well-being topics in courses across the university to connect “students’ academic studies and their broader life experiences, especially in the areas of well-being, flourishing, and mental health.” The result: students feel that courses are more relevant to their lives and engage more with course material.
Since 2005, more than 20,000 students have taken an Engelhard Course, and close to 220 faculty members and 95 campus resource professionals have participated in 650 courses. When the program started, Georgetown offered five Engelhard Courses. In the spring 2024 semester, the university offered fifty-eight.
Each semester, faculty apply with the Engelhard Protect to be fellows and submit course proposals. Among the proposal requirements: each course must feature an in-class visit from a Georgetown campus resource professional, such as a staff member from the student health center or the LGBTQ+ resource center. Course subjects range from psychology to ethics and even math. One example of an Englehard Course is Introduction to Math Modeling, which incorporates data sets involving nutrition, gambling, and alcohol. Other examples are Art of the Monologue, which features discussions of mindfulness, and an intro-to-ethics course that teaches Immanuel Kant’s writings on topics like substance abuse and sexual objectification. Georgetown’s associate director for sexual assault response and prevention services gives a guest lecture to “bring campus life into the classroom,” as the course description states.
Not all courses work as an Engelhard Course. But in those that do, instructors say, students often have an easier time learning the subject matter and enjoy a deeper relationship with professors.
“One faculty member said to me that ‘Engelhard has helped me see my students as whole people and bring more of my whole self to the course and to my teaching,’ ” says Joselyn Schulz Lewis, co-lead for the Engelhard Project for Connecting Life and Learning and senior associate director for inclusive teaching and learning initiatives at the Center for New Designs in Learning and Scholarship. “ ‘When I do that, I enjoy it more. I think they’re learning better. I think I’m teaching better.’ ”
Students often don’t realize they’re taking an Engelhard Course, yet for many, the impact can be profound. Nestory Ngolle is a pre-med junior who took an Engelhard Course called Introduction to Medical Anthropology, which changed his thinking about patient care.
“The professor aimed to break that mold of what we think of as health care and reshape it in a form that essentially targets a patient’s needs,” says Ngolle, who serves on Engelhard’s student advisory council. “If someone has a cold, maybe they need NyQuil to feel well physically. But maybe they would feel mentally well if they could take the day off and rest. Those are two different kinds of wellness. And being in a class that recognizes those differences, and illuminates them. . . . I found that to be a great experience with the Engelhard project.”
For faculty like Elmendorf—who before the Engelhard project hadn’t revealed her depression—the experience has been equally transformative. You cannot “legitimately invite your students into this space if you’re not willing to join them in this space,” Elmendorf says in a video on the Engelhard website (engelhard.georgetown.edu). “To understand that a faculty member is also struggling with mental health issues . . . instantly changes their perception about who our community is and who they can be.”