Mental Health, Substance Use, and Wellbeing in Higher Education Supporting the Whole Student (2021) / Chapter Skim
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1 Introduction
1 Introduction
Pages 17-32
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From page 17... ...
. Treating mental illness at this stage in an individual's development is key to lessening the potential for chronic mental conditions.
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. a The Healthy Minds Network has administered an annual web-based survey of under graduate and graduate student mental health–related issues since 2007.
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. An April 2020 survey by the American Council of Education found that 41 percent of university presidents ranked student mental health concerns as one of the five most pressing issues facing their institutions (Turk et al., 2020a)
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For example, the Healthy Minds Study and the American College Health Associa tion's report The Impact of COVID-19 on College Student Wellbeing provided data from 14 campuses.a Main findings include: • 23.3 percent of students reported that it was "much more difficult" and 36.8 reported that it was "somewhat more difficult" to access mental health care. • 26.4 percent reported their financial situation to be "a lot more stressful" and 39.6 percent reported it to be "somewhat more stressful." • Compared to fall 2019, self-reported rates of depression increased, sub stance use decreased, and more students reported that mental health neg atively impacted their academic performance.
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From page 21... ...
. This risk is particularly relevant for institutions of higher education given that adolescence and early adulthood is when most mental illnesses are first experienced (American Psychiatric Association, 2018)
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While education has been characterized as the great equalizer, institutions of higher education have hardly been immune from the systemic inequalities and racism that have constrained equal opportunity, adding further stressors to students' academic resilience. Awareness of how students experience stressors within educational environments is critical, whether it is in activating effects of past trauma, revealing undiagnosed mental health issues, or navigating social and institutional mechanisms of privilege and equity.
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THE CASE FOR SHARED RESPONSIBILITY The goal of postsecondary education is to equip students with the knowledge and degree credentials that will enable them to be productive members of society. Hence, it will undoubtedly further an institution's academic mission to increase student degree completion rates and foster a higher level of student performance and learning via a campus-wide focus on student mental health and wellbeing.
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Mental wellbeing includes a sense of personal safety and security, emotional support and connection, mechanisms to cope with stressors, and access to services when appropriate for short- and long-term care. with a grade point average less than 3.0 screened positive for at least one mental illness.
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Virtually every institution of higher education provides some sort of mental health counseling, typically through a counseling and psychological services center. This institutionalized function, though usually underfunded to provide all of the mental health needs for matriculating students, can lead college and university leaders to assume that simply bolstering their counseling centers could be an acceptable solution to mental health problems that today's students face.
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From page 26... ...
."3 An "all hands" approach, one that emphasizes shared responsibility and a holistic understanding of what it means in practice to support students, is needed if institutions of higher education are to intervene from anything more than a reactive standpoint. Creating this systemic change requires that institutions examine the entire culture and environment of the institution and accept more responsibility for creating learning environments where a changing student population can thrive.
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BACKGROUND OF THE REPORT To understand how the culture of a given institution of higher education affects student wellbeing and can trigger student mental health problems or exacerbate existing ones, and to identify approaches that institutions can adopt to foster student wellbeing and help those students who are having difficulties, the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine launched an 18-month consensus study in June 2019. Under the auspices of the Board on Higher Education and Workforce, and in collaboration with the Health and Medicine Division, the National Academies appointed a committee of experts to examine the most current research and consider the ways that institutions of higher education, including community colleges, provide treatment and support for the mental health and wellbeing of undergraduate and graduate students in all fields of study.
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Mental wellbeing includes a sense of personal safety and security, emotional support and connection, mechanisms to cope with stressors, and access to services when appropriate for short- and long-term care. The committee believes that institutions have a responsibility both to enhance the wellbeing of all students and to provide additional support to a subset of students with more severe emotional distress and mental illness.
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The report, therefore, contains some information on graduate students and medical students but focuses primarily on undergraduate students. Even though the committee was asked to investigate mental health issues among Science, Technology, Engineering, Mathematics, and Medicine (STEMM)
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DATA SOURCES AND CONSIDERATIONS Data on mental health and substance use in students can be challenging to interpret for a number of reasons. These data are drawn from different groups of students, including those seeking mental health services in counseling centers, subjects of targeted surveys on specific problems, higher education students in general, and broader segments of an age-equivalent population in and outside academia.
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postsecondary education enterprise, including federal and state policy makers and funders, institutions of higher education and their administrators and faculty, as well as the students that the system is intended to educate. The recommendations are intended to help the nation's institutions of higher education provide guidance that enables all who work and learn within it to create an environment that supports student wellbeing, establishes a culture that destigmatizes mental health issues, and provides those students in need with the appropriate services and resources.
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From page 32... ...
32 MENTAL HEALTH, SUBSTANCE USE, AND WELLBEING IN HIGHER EDUCATION mental health, substance use, and wellbeing approaches, resources, and programs provided to the general student population, and Chapter 4 covers services provided to students by licensed providers or in a clinical setting. Chapter 5 examines specific challenges and barriers to change and the opportunities to address them with evidence-based interventions.
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