College campuses are facing a mental health crisis. Students are leading the way out of it
By Sarah Bregel
Heading off to college is an exciting rite of passage for about four million students every year. But leaving home, typically for the first time, coupled with a challenging course load, social obligations, and for many, balancing a job, can bring serious stress. That’s why while college can be a fun and immersive period of self-discovery, it can also be one where mental health issues deepen or arise for the first time.
At the height of the pandemic, mental health issues for college students were even more common. About 60% of students met the criteria for at least one mental health issue, like generalized anxiety or major depressive disorder. However, the issues existed before COVID-19: In 2019, nearly 50% of college students reported feelings of loneliness, 35.7% were depressed, 31% had anxiety, and 21% had suicidal ideation lasting more than two weeks.
Students are suffering with their mental health like never before, and while there are many reasons why college enrollment has seen its biggest slump ever, an epidemic of poor mental health in young people is certainly a factor.
Schools are also addressing the mental health crisis by making therapy services more accessible to students. For example, the State University of New York (SUNY), a 64-campus system, partnered with Thriving Campus, an app that connects students to licensed mental health providers. Dozens of other colleges are partnering with mental health apps to serve their students, and at some, those services can be accessed 24 hours a day. Other schools, meanwhile, are asking staff to be their “first responders.” At the University of North Carolina and Penn State, faculty are being trained to look out for changes in students’ behavior.
But the mental health crisis among college students is largely being addressed by those affected by it—the students themselves.
Some schools are seeing the rise of student-led mental health classes that look more like group therapy. At Pace University in New York, one such four-week elective is called Radical Health, which doesn’t just teach about mental health basics but encourages students to talk openly about what they’re struggling with. For many of them, it’s the first time they’ve done so in a group setting. And that can be a powerful life skill to learn at a formative time. They also learn about positive self-talk, the importance of understanding their emotions, and finding out how to seek help.
Those skills are valuable because they can help students get ahead of their mental health issues before they find themselves in a crisis. So far, 20 colleges have adopted the Radical Health course.
Other programs are training students to do mental health work, too. UCLA is home to a peer-to-peer counseling network. Students who take part are trained to support other students in an intensive eight-week course that teaches them iCBT (internet-based cognitive behavior therapy), mindfulness, and more. And the most common kinds of campus meetups for students who need support are student-run clubs.
Twenty years ago, there were none at all until Alison Malmon, a student at the University of Pennsylvania, went searching for one to replicate. She created Active Minds after her brother died by suicide. In recent years, as the mental health crisis among students has been surging, the club has grown alongside it. It’s now present at over 1,000 campuses. Research says it’s making a huge difference in the lives of students.
With rates of mental health issues continuing to increase, it’s likely that more and more services to address them will emerge on campuses. Given that students are the ones who understand what modern college kids are struggling with the most, they are bound to be the ones who keep creating, and training for, services to address those very struggles.
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