Mental health on college campuses is an ever-increasing issue of disquiet for students, faculty, staff, administrators, parents, and families. This is most evident in a recent edition of the Chronicle of Higher Education with its front page banner: “Today’s Anguished Students.” The Chronicle presents alarming statistics: 89 percent of campuses have seen a rise in clinical depression, 8 percent of students have seriously considered suicide in the past 12 months, and a confounding factor of 31 percent of campus-counseling centers having waiting lists. Campus mental health has progressively become the perfect storm: increased mental-health severity and decreased or stagnant mental-health service. Anxiousness and concern about this are high.
Student anguish, more commonly called “distress,” may cause faculty and staff anxiety about how to make the right response of accurately recognizing distress, responding to it, and referring to campus resources. Student distress may cause parents and families to wonder if their students will receive the necessary support and care they need to be academically and interpersonally successful. Student distress leaves students wondering about their own abilities to manage the pressures and stresses of college life and their workplace futures.
Here’s the progressive and positive news: For the past three years, a multi-organizational committee composed of campus and community partners mounted a federally funded campus suicide prevention initiative. The University of Iowa Student Government is developing a specific mental-health platform this year for its campus-wide activities. Campus chapters of national organizations, including Active Minds, are focused on changing the conversation about campus mental health. On campus, there are designated mental-health services, including the University Counseling Service in Westlawn and in the College of Dentistry; the Employee Assistance Program; the Women’s Resource and Action Center; and the Dean of Students Care and Assistance Office. The university provides online resources including a suicide-prevention resource page and online suicide-prevention training. The University Counseling Service provides programming aimed at raising awareness of student distress, instilling confidence and skills to respond, and knowing campus resource networks to which to connect students. The “not-so-positive” news is service networks can fail, usually for one reason: It does not get used enough. Help-seeking behavior is still not mainstream. Many do not reach out for the assistance readily available on campus. This can be more so for international students and students from under-represented communities who sometimes do not engage in help seeking due to services historically lacking inclusivity.
While the university provides numerous services, we need you to make it work. Join us by being an active partner. Tell others about campus mental-health services, engage in trainings, act on your awareness of student distress, ask students about their well-being in addition to their academic pursuits, invite campus mental-health programming into your classrooms, organizational meetings, and residential settings, share your own stories; encourage student organizational involvement, advocate for increased resources, use social media to spread the word of hope and help, consult with campus experts when you have concerns, and have confidence to use campus services. Help the UI to take campus mental health seriously.
— Barry A. Schreier, director of the University Counseling Service and
Lyn Redington, assistant vice president & dean of students
Women’s Resource and Action Center
Dean of Students Care and Assistance Office
Kognito Suicide Prevention Training
Students in Distress Workshop (Email: [email protected])
UI Suicide Prevention Resources
