Articles and research from our team on the future of mental healthcare for young adults.

Twin Sisters and AVPs of Health and Wellness Take on Health Equity in Higher Education

Shawnté Elbert, EdD, CWHC, MCHES, and Sherrá Watkins, PhD, LCMHC-S, LCAS, CRC, CCS, twin sisters, are making waves in the college health and wellness space. Both work in similar roles at different campuses: Dr. Elbert is the Associate Vice President of Health and Well-being at the Ohio State University and Dr. Watkins is the Associate Vice President for Health and Wellness at the University of Utah. 

At the heart of their work is a deep and abiding commitment to help serve students in their communities and build a better campus system that actually supports health equity initiatives. This duo, full of passion and determination, is poised to make a long-lasting impact in the world of higher education. 

Two Different Paths, but the Same Shared Vision

Born and raised in Winston Salem, North Carolina, Dr. Elbert and Dr. Watkins saw firsthand the need for health and mental health support. Their father, who received a full scholarship to Wake Forest University, succumbed to drug addiction at a time when the ‘The War on Drugs’ wasn’t treated with critical attention or care, preventing him from graduating. Their mother, just eighteen when they were born, became a nurse and worked in the hospital, then in a doctor’s office, where Dr. Elbert and Dr. Watkins spent many after-school days. 

Throughout their childhood, they witnessed the generosity and camaraderie of the healthcare workers, in addition to the kindness of their grandmother who was a hospital nurse and later, a home health nurse, as well as the glue bringing family and community members together. They both decided, early on, they would become lifelong helpers. 

After working as peer health educators and graduating as first-generation college students from East Carolina University, they extended their academic careers and went on to acquire five postgraduate degrees between them. Dr. Elbert jump-started her career in higher education right away, and has now spent 17 years experience across health education, wellness, and student affairs. Dr. Watkins, in contrast, spent many years working in public health and ambulatory care, focusing on mental health, substance use, rehabilitation counseling, and chronic diseases, before turning back to higher education. To this day, she still maintains a private practice. 

“The majority of my sister’s clients outside of campus are people of color and those in the LGBTQ+ community. Being able to pick her brain on how she’s working with these clients and bring that insight to campus has been pivotal, says Dr. Elbert. At the same time, Dr. Watkins will turn to her sister for mentorship and guidance around higher education, as Dr. Elbert has spent many years working as a leader in this space. 

With two different perspectives, but the same shared mission, the sisters maintain an ongoing discussion around college mental health. Dr. Elbert and Dr. Watkins have created a shared space, where they can “cry and debrief” and offer support to one another during challenging times. They often share what has worked in the community, what has or hasn’t worked in higher education, and how they can better support students and their staff on campus today. 

One of their long-term visions is to reimagine and restructure the higher education systems of care and take a much larger, preventive approach to health and wellness, which will help reach diverse, underserved students who may not feel comfortable help-seeking or utilizing clinical services. 

Building Programs for More Preventative, Holistic Care

A lot of institutions tie student success to student retention, but don’t always consider the full scope of why students are stopping out or leaving, Dr. Elbert explains. “How do we go upstream and find out what’s actually impacting our students prior to coming to campus so we can build a model to assist and support them holistically when they get here?” 

Starting with basic needs and the dimensions of wellness, Dr. Elbert and Dr. Watkins aim to equip students with the skills and tools they need to advocate and care for themselves and feel empowered once they graduate. Part of that solution would include peer-to-peer support, wellness coaching, more campus resources, and opportunities for social engagement. 

Ultimately, they believe the opportunity and responsibility to create a better culture of care for students, is on the institution itself – and the campus stakeholders. 

This is why Dr. Elbert and her colleagues at Ohio State University are working to launch, in phases, the Buckeyes T.H.R.I.V.E. program, which takes a preventative approach to student health and well-being, in partnership with Dr. Kia McKinnie and the First Year Experience team and other campus partners. Part of the program will include a Wellness Passport, which encourages students to engage in campus activities and resources, and will focus on various elements of health and wellness, including sleep, finances, stress, and nutrition. Dr. Elbert hopes to embed the program into existing first-year courses so students really take advantage of it. 

Dr. Watkins loved the idea so much, she took it straight to her team at the University of Utah and they are now using the major concepts of the framework to build out their own program. In addition to establishing a preventative approach to student health and wellbeing, which they plan to make some components digital, Dr. Watkins and the University of Utah staff want to really highlight the importance of understanding who incoming and current students are in order to help them access and navigate campus programs and services, and critical health literacy topics like health insurance and deductibles, as students use their current insurance and will have to navigate the U.S. healthcare system upon graduation. 

While the programs will vary to account for institutional differences, the ultimate goal for both sisters is to achieve health equity for all students, regardless of their socioeconomic status. 

“Building a connection within the first couple of weeks for a student is very, very crucial when it comes to academic success and mental health wellness,” says Dr. Watkins, which is why both sisters are considering the best ways to assess and screen students in a safe, secure way, and build in more interaction so they can determine the existing state of student mental health on campus. They’re even considering co-creating a healthy equity assessment, which doesn’t currently exist. 

Overcoming Limitations and Building Wraparound Services

“We have to stop being a crisis-focused center,” Dr. Elbert says. “If we continue to work this way, we’ll neglect to serve the students who don’t look like they’re in crisis.” 

While many institutions are faced with staffing shortages, being under resourced, and budgeting limitations, offering more preventative services can not only improve the student experience and assist with student persistence, but it can actually prevent students from reaching a state of crisis. A good first step to building a preventative model? Using a root cause analysis, Dr. Elbert suggests, and figuring out which systems need to change. 

Dr. Watkins also wants to merge the siloed departments that currently exist on campus to build wraparound services for students. One of her big initiatives is creating a referral pathway across the campus that’s open, transparent, and consistent. Bringing together different stakeholders from the counseling, wellness, recreation, student health, and disability departments, she let them all know that at some point they would need to start sharing critical information. 

Dr. Elbert is planning to do the same and will bring in other key departments like academic affairs. The challenge, however, is finding the technology to bring all of these people into one central system where there’s just one profile for the student. While student confidentiality and privacy would be incorporated, ensuring that only relevant stakeholders would be able to view certain information, it would eliminate the disparate systems that currently exist in higher education. 

“Not every student needs counseling,” Dr. Elbert explains. While some students are in crisis and do need clinical intervention, many just need support. They may be experiencing financial issues or a recent breakup which is preventing them from focusing on their academics. The goal, she says, is to not only help the student, but decrease the amount of time it takes to help the student, and decrease the amount of times that student has to repeat their story. 

The sisters want to change the way higher education works – and they both feel as though we’re in a pivotal moment. With more and more people acknowledging health promotion and the need for health equity, they feel hopeful that higher education will change for the better and students will, someday, receive the support they really need to thrive.

“Working on a campus is a privilege and an honor,” says Dr. Elbert. “It’s also personal for us.” 

Dr. Watkins and Dr. Elbert were featured as part of our Spotlight series on prominent leaders in higher education. If you know someone who you would like to be featured, please email us at outreach@mantrahealth.com.

Cultivating a Culture of Care with the Catholic University of America’s Dean of Students

Higher education wasn’t a common pursuit in the community where Jonathan Sawyer, Associate Vice President for Student Affairs and Dean of Students at the Catholic University of America, grew up. In his graduating class of approximately 200 students, fewer than ten went on to pursue a four-year degree and he was one of them. 

He wanted to follow in his brother’s footsteps and pursue a career in engineering, but Sawyer had a hard time adjusting to campus life at Virginia Tech. He had little social interaction with his peers, didn’t connect with professors, and was in a challenging living situation. At the end of his freshmen year, he went to the housing office to request a change – and ended up with a job in housing services, where he helped new students with the transition to campus. 

This experience strengthened Sawyer’s relationship to the university and led to other opportunities, more enjoyment, and greater academic success. He hopes that, regardless of what college a student chooses to attend, they will find that same degree of connection, support, and engagement that Sawyer found at Virginia Tech.

Turning the Dean’s Office into a Hub for Students

After earning a master’s degree in Higher Education and Student Affairs from Virginia Tech, Sawyer took a job as the Residence Hall Director at Ball State University in 1995, then moved to Catholic University in 1998 where he first worked in Residential Life and Student Conduct and later as the Dean of Students, a role he has held for 19 of his 25 years at the university.

Sawyer has been in the trenches with the students, helping them work through challenges, and he’s managed a staff that has faced an ever-increasing volume of student issues. Since the pandemic, Sawyer has found himself engaging more and more with students. The caseload has almost quadrupled in his office, although there are few undergraduate students enrolled at the university.

From his vantage point, Sawyer believes that virtual engagement during COVID has impacted a great number of students’ ability to develop coping skills needed to overcome obstacles, leading to an increase in engagement between students and staff. “Students are also more comfortable articulating certain issues and we’ve created a framework here to engage with students. We encourage them to come forward when they need help,” says Sawyer. Students will go to the dean’s office to discuss their academic challenges, or personal hardships. “They learn pretty quickly that this isn’t a place that gets you in trouble. We help the students.”

At larger state schools, students might not interact with the Dean of Students, but at a small, private Catholic university, it’s different. “Everybody should know you,” Sawyer explains, which is why he has deliberately created a culture of openness within the department and encouraged students, parents, and other community members to come to his office with any questions or concerns, which he then filters out to his staff. This has allowed the dean’s office to become a centralized place for students to access guidance and support.

Sawyer wants students to “learn how to cope, how to be resilient, and how to recognize that life is full of setbacks and, at times, failure.” He wants students to develop key skills, like communication, negotiation, self-reliance, so they can overcome these obstacles and make a broader impact on the community around them. The challenge, however, is maintaining a strong relationship with the students and building the proper support systems to care for them across all four years. This starts with the parents, with the months leading up to college, and freshmen orientation, but must continue through the duration of that student’s time on campus. 

Maintaining Balance in a High-Stress Environment 

Now more than ever, students are talking about their mental health and seeking out counseling services, which has dramatically increased the service utilization rates. At the same, we’ve witnessed more suicides, deaths, disturbances, and shootings at campuses across the country, which has turned the counseling center into a triage center.

Staff, from counseling services to student affairs, are overworked, and often overwhelmed with the rising demand. To mitigate these problems, Sawyer treats the dean’s office like a hub, where initial intakes can be conducted. Maybe a student does need counseling support, or maybe they simply need coaching. By establishing the dean’s office as the go-to place on campus, Sawyer has managed to reach anywhere from 35-45% of the entire undergraduate population on an annual basis. 

Maintaining this structure is challenging, however, with students graduating every year, and as the university aims to double its enrollment over the next decade. But Sawyer and his staff have been working for the university for many, many years, long before COVID. They’ve weathered many storms and they know how to cope with the changes and roll up their sleeves and get to work. They also understand that the chaos will rise and fall across the academic year, but when limits are reached staff are reminded to take pause before resuming. 

“We can’t get overwhelmed by the reality of what today is, because tomorrow is going to bring something different,” says Sawyer. At the same time, “we can’t keep pushing through because it will pile up and that’s not healthy either.”

Sawyer aims to maintain the balance, but knows that it’s a year-round rollercoaster, and rest needs to be taken during breaks and in the summer months. This downtime also gives Sawyer and his staff time to rethink procedures and processes of the year and consider what worked, what didn’t, and what approach should be taken for the next academic year. 

Keeping the Focus on the Student Experience 

“The work is ever-changing. There’s never a dull moment,” Sawyer says. He describes the experience of supporting students across the four-year journey as akin to having children, of which he has three of his own. “You get to see these students change and grow, just like you do your own family.” 

Often, he’ll tell students of the many times he went fishing in college. The river near his undergraduate campus was winding and in order to find the right place, he had to test out different spots, push his limits, sometimes wading into the water, and always adjusting his position based on the weather or time of year. Sawyer compares this experience to college, in which there are obstacles that need to be overcome – and in which students have the opportunity to develop their own sense of independence. 

“It's about loving yourself and self-sufficiency,” Sawyer says. Far too often students are encouraged to go to college, find their spouse, get a job, but what they should be focused on is their own self-identity and finding the things that bring them joy. “What we do isn’t rocket science, but it’s really hard work. It’s stressful. And we don’t know what the future holds, but hopefully good things.”

Photo copyright: Ed Pfueller | The Catholic University of America

If you wish to be a part of our spotlight profile series, email us at outreach@mantrahealth.com. 

Preventative Care with the President and CEO of Consortium of Universities of the Washington Metropolitan Area

Dr. Andrew Flagel, PhD, President and CEO of the Consortium of Universities of the Washington Metropolitan Area and Visiting Senior Scholar at The George Washington University, has worked in higher education for 30+ years. 

You wouldn’t know that Dr. Flagel intended to become an attorney. His mother, a school teacher and community activist, founded one of the largest economic development programs in the country – and Dr. Flagel thought he would follow in similar footsteps. But when he got on campus, his perspective changed. 

“I found myself really engaged in the life of the university and its interaction with the community and that led me to, much to my parents’ dismay, turn down law school to decide that I would spend my career in education,” says Dr. Flagel.  

While an undergraduate student at George Washington University, Dr. Flagel worked three jobs to overcome financial hardship. At the same time, he enjoyed every opportunity he was afforded, including being a part of the radio station, taking on leadership roles, working for the university, and receiving mentorship from the university’s president. 

During this time, he started to consider “new ways of thinking about access to colleges and universities,” an interest that really propelled the rest of his career. After completing his masters, Dr. Flagel took the regional director of admissions role at his alma mater. 

“I had no idea I’d be doing this for the next four decades,” says Dr. Flagel, who went on to earn his PhD in Education from Michigan State University. 

Dr. Flagel has worked in enrollment, marketing, public relations, student affairs, among other areas. For seven years, he worked as the Senior Vice President for Students and Enrollment at Brandeis University, where he oversaw various departments, including sexual assault services and prevention, the health and counseling centers, athletics, housing, financial aid, and many others. 

“It’s such a tremendous sense of responsibility when you wake up every morning, feeling like these lives are in your hands and knowing that you can't save them all,” he says. “I don’t have a great solution for those who are in it every day,” but he understands that the work these campus leaders are doing is essential. 

This is, in part, why he enjoys his current role, in which he gets to support those on the ground, providing them with resources and tools to develop more student health and well-being initiatives. 

Removing Barriers to Care in a Post-COVID World

The mental health challenges affecting students have been exacerbated by the COVID-19 pandemic, putting an enormous stress on the campus and its community.

“Anyone working in student affairs or education understands that there has been a rising tide of anxiety and other disorders in students at the elementary, middle school, and early-college level,” says Dr. Flagel. While older adults have started to move on, the younger generations are still recovering, Dr. Flagel explains. “That wave was heading towards us before the pandemic. With the pandemic, we’ve seen this incredible surge in anxiety, self-harm, and other mental health conditions.” 

The pandemic has had cascading effects on the students, but also the faculty and staff who are working long hours, often with few resources, to meet the ever-increasing demand for support. If the staff are experiencing anxiety, how are they supporting students? If the counseling center is overwhelmed, how are they meeting rising demand? What about the student health center? These are questions Dr. Flagel is working to solve as he focuses on campus- and community-wide initiatives.  

One of the biggest barriers to care, he knows, is based on socioeconomic factors. Students are battling financial instability, food insecurity, and housing concerns, but also societal problems, like gun violence and the opioid epidemic. 

Creating Better Solutions for Holistic Health

While there are many challenges to addressing student health and well-being, Dr. Flagel has found that building partnerships across the campus and community provides tremendous value. During the pandemic, for instance, the Consortium received a grant from the Rockefeller Foundation and worked with AU and Gallaudet to expand access to COVID-19 testing. Other initiatives include partnering with the Capital Area Food Bank to address food insecurity on campus, and working on a massive project to bring affordable housing to students. 

Additionally, over 100 faculty members, from across 18 institutions across the Consortium, are working collaboratively to develop the best possible recommendations for practical and actionable approaches to reducing gun violence, Dr. Flagel explains. And next year, he’d like to tackle the opioid epidemic and increase campus access to Narcan. 

One of the biggest challenges is recognizing the fact that the structure of higher education doesn’t really support big complex initiatives. Each campus is designed to be autonomous and separate. Even internally, collaboration is difficult to achieve, which is why Dr. Flagel suggests creating new mechanisms for collaboration. 

“We’ve siloed, in bizarre ways, student wellness from approaches to student success,” Dr. Flagel suggests. “A strategic approach to wellness starts with an equity approach. We know these challenges are significantly greater in the lowest income brackets and among populations that are significantly underserved. How do we make sure that we're not losing students because of housing, lack of access to food, lack of access to appropriate health care, and how do we do that proactively?”

At Georgia State University, for example, micro-grants are now being offered to students who are nearing graduation and falling short financially. At Denison University, President Adam Weinberg has invested in a new wellness center that combines medical, counseling, and wellness, to create a whole person approach to health. 

The most expensive visit is the emergency room, Dr. Flagel explains. Rather than waiting for students to reach a state of distress, why aren’t we thinking more proactively? And how can we track outcomes? Rather than tracking visits, how do we figure out metrics? If we’re not measuring and disaggregating that data, we’re failing to determine programs and initiatives that are most successful, he says. 

“It’s a critical time to think about the health of our community, but it requires a team effort and a kind of visionary strategic approach. Everything matters, from insurance to providers to access,” says Dr. Flagel. 

Photo credit: Consortium of Universities of the Washington Metropolitan Area

President Brian W. Casey spends much of his free time on the College University Campus, swimming, attending the institution’s athletic events, hosting dinners, walking his dog through the quad, and conversing with students. He doesn’t have to engage in this way, but Casey loves being a part of the campus community. 

“This is where I belong, on a campus” he says. “When I run into a group of students and they pet my dog and tell me what’s going on, I’m completely energized.”

For many years, before working at Brown University, Harvard University, and DePauw University, where he served as the institution’s 19th president, Casey was an attorney on Wall Street. He was wildly successful, but unsatisfied with the life he had created for himself. Where did he belong? After leaving his law firm, he gave himself one year to answer one basic question: what’s the one thing that’s true about me? 

During this brief time, Casey wrestled with a loss of identity and a newfound understanding that many of his life’s achievements had been, perhaps, driven by the interests of others. Were the achievements driven by an inner interest, or by an effort to please others? While visiting his sister in California and touring some local universities, Casey realized that he was happiest on a college campus and always had been. He knew he belonged on a campus. This simple, yet profound realization – his one true thing – led him back to higher education, first as a PhD student at Harvard University where he earned his doctorate in History, and now, years later, as Colgate’s 17th president.

Recognizing the Importance of the Campus Environment 

Casey believes the beauty of a campus – and its culture – plays an important role in the lives of the students. As the president of Colgate, he aims to “nurture and strengthen the campus, make it more beautiful, make it more redolent of connection, make it a place of belonging, but also exploration for students.”

As an undergraduate student at the University of Notre Dame, where he was a Division I swimmer, Casey felt this sense of community. The beautiful tight-knit campus was infused with rituals and traditions that structured campus life and created instant bonds among the students. This wasn’t always the case, he believes, when he attended Stanford University for law school. As a young twenty-something new graduate student on a sprawling, California  campus, he found it harder to establish a sense of community.

“Notre Dame undergraduate students didn’t have to wonder where to go on Wednesday nights,” Casey recalls, because there were built-in routines which everyone seemed to follow. In many ways, it was comforting falling into such rhythms. At times, though, it could seem to be constraining. As a gay man on a largely conservative campus, finding a distinct identity was challenging at times, but the experience, as a whole, had a positive impact on the president. 

“I remember walking back from the library at Notre Dame, walking through beautiful quadrangles, my mind buzzing from reading and studying. And now I think, this is my job. My job is to make that moment available for Colgate students,” says Casey. “Most people don’t spend their lives in a place where they can walk to libraries at night and read books, but on campus that’s really the student’s job – to read, to think, to connect and to walk under beautiful trees on a beautiful campus.”

In addition to the day-to-day administration tasks, Casey says one of his greatest challenges (and privileges) as the Colgate president is telling students stories of themselves. “You create a space and you tell them it’s a space. You tell them when they arrive, ‘these are four years that will be quite different from the other years of your life. This will be different. But it’s for you to use, to consider, to grow into.’’ Part of my job is to tell them that.” 

During an opening speech to an incoming freshman class, he once said, “If you do nothing else this year but fall in love with one book, that’s all you have to do.” An avid reader himself, Casey admits, “I’ve never met a really good book that didn’t lead me to the next book.” 

Since joining Colgate, Casey has launched a $1 billion Third-Century Plan, created a hub for creativity and innovation, planted over 400 trees, removed student loans from financial aid packages, and increased assistance for all students on financial aid to help pay for their books, among other impactful initiatives. He is working to remove barriers for students, give them safety, support, and resources, but also create beautiful spaces for them to connect with one another and learn.  

“I know there’s a student on campus reading a book right now that Colgate alumnus has made possible – and that makes me very happy,” says Casey. 

Creating a Sense of Belonging Among Students 

With an ongoing rise of anxiety, depression, and suicidality on campus, Casey says it's important for administrators to prioritize student well-being and “take what may seem like student dramas seriously.” It’s easy to say, “it’s silly to be worked up about a test or a romantic breakup,” Casey explains, “but I remember being worked up about these things at their age. This is the oldest our students have ever been and their dramas are quite real for them. When something goes wrong, they feel like their whole world is collapsing.”

Even though Colgate has increased support services and capacity and created more ways for students to reach out, Casey says, “We’re doing a very poor job of teaching students to remove themselves from the endless noise of the world. I worry that we send so many emails and messages to them. Then encourage them to get their resumes in order and their careers started early. These all may be very good and necessary things, but it is rare for us to say, ‘why don't you read tonight? Why don’t you slow down?’” 

In this post-pandemic world, more and more students are missing out on the community aspect of college life. Many forgo shared meals to use the grab-and-go options at the dining hall; some are joining the Greek system, but don’t feel it fully represents who they are. Others are trying to establish themselves without the Greek system, without clear direction or support. This is why Casey continues to ask himself: How do we create a sense of belonging for students and create different, varied spaces on campus? How do we create rituals and diversify them to reach more students? 

One major initiative is expanding and enhancing what was once a simple fraternity row on the campus into a larger and richer new campus neighborhood for Colgate juniors and seniors that gives them places to eat and gather. Fraternities, sororities, and theme houses will be renovated and connected to new courtyards and quadrangles with new apartments and townhouses.  All of this will be knit together with new green space and new gathering places. These changes will create new pathways and spaces for connection, which will promote belonging and help students establish themselves as individuals as well as community members. 

Though this may not seem like a direct tie to mental well-being, promoting social connectedness has proven to be a key component of mental health promotion and suicide prevention – and will aid in the support of student mental health. 

“We’re working to really redefine what the campus is, what it should be physically, and what it should be programmatically,” says Casey. “This is what feels most paramount.” 

Colgate University has partnered with Mantra Health to expand accessibility to high-quality, evidence-based mental health care. To learn more about this partnership and the services being offered to students, email us at partner@mantrahealth.com. 

Colgate University President Brian W. Casey Promotes Social Connectedness and Belonging on Campus

Reimagining the Role of the Counseling Center: How Hamilton College Approaches Student Mental Health

The Hamilton College Counseling Center wants to get the right treatment to the right students at the right time. To achieve this, David Walden, PhD, Counseling Center Director at Hamilton College, works on setting reasonable expectations around service offerings, session availability, and provider capabilities. 

“It doesn’t mean putting up boundaries. It doesn’t mean saying ‘No.’” says Dr. Walden, PhD. What it really means is being upfront about the role that the counseling center plays in the student journey.

Early on, students, along with their parents and guardians, are given messages that mental health support is available to all students at all times, no matter their situation. While free mental health services are offered on most campuses, not every center is equipped with the staff, resources, or clinical expertise to meet every student's mental health needs at all times, even if they wish that were true – and this can result in confusion, disappointment, and frustration.

While Hamilton College offers a wide range of services, including wellness and clinical offerings, Dr. Walden hopes that institutions, in general, will get real about higher education’s capacity to serve students in distress. This means being more open and honest with students upfront so they know what to expect when they walk into the campus counseling center. 

Prioritizing Transparency in College Counseling

“Wait lists are not meeting people's needs. They promise something that we may not be able to deliver or provide in a timeframe that is going to meet a students’ clinical needs,” Dr. Walden explains, which is why he prefers to focus on developing an intentional approach to services that other resources for mental health needs that can be fulfilled elsewhere.

Overrun with requests for appointments, many counseling centers are inundated with intakes and constantly adding new patients to their providers’ rotations. This increases a provider’s caseload, leads to long wait times, and inevitably lowers the quality of care provided. 

Dr. Walden believes there’s another way. 

Success to me is being transparent and honest, and just saying: ‘Here's what we can and can't do’. Instead of attempting to meet all needs with limited resources, our goal should be to be honest with the people we serve. That may mean a student doesn't get exactly what they are seeking, but that's a reality [that exists] in healthcare broadly, not just in higher education.

Rather than promising to meet every need, why can’t some students be directed to on-campus wellness programs? And others referred to more intensive clinical services off campus? Providers are working against [multiple] sets of expectations, Dr. Walden explains, and students have ideas of what they want, which are often at odds with what they really need. These young adults are in the early stages of understanding what the world around them can and cannot provide – and learning that the campus center isn’t fully equipped to fulfill a student’s every need can be hard to digest. 

This is hard for people who work in college settings. “We didn't get into this business to not respond to pain and suffering,” said Dr. Walden. “But there's a real opportunity for us just to embrace and admit that we can't be everything.”

Meeting Student Mental Health Needs with Diverse Offerings

Years before the pandemic, Hamilton College started exploring supplementary offerings and ways to provide a more comprehensive set of mental health services – and over time, the counseling center has learned that students’ preferences are wide-ranging. Using student feedback and suggestions, as well as formal methods of assessment, including satisfaction surveys and questionnaires, Hamilton College is able to take a more proactive approach to student mental health. 

“We recognize that students as human beings are holistic entities and need a more holistic approach to care,” Dr. Walden explains, which is why the counseling center provides both clinical services like individual therapy, group therapy, psychiatric care, dietitian care, and peer counselors and wellness offerings that are also effective and impactful. 

Some of Hamilton College’s wellness offerings include art therapy, acupuncture, movement and music programs, as well as a Wellness Room with weighted blankets, biofeedback, and massage chairs. The counseling center has also established the Community Pantry, a virtual cooking class with a registered dietitian, which has helped students with cooking and preparing healthy meals.

“College centers aren’t inpatient or intensive outpatient treatment centers,” Walden says, but they can function as a supportive place for students to access reliable resources, gain direction, and access a myriad of mental health offerings.

“By moving some students to wellness and virtual therapy options, our staff can focus on the quality of treatment provided to students assigned to an on-campus counselor,” says Dr. Walden, which has resulted in positive outcomes for Hamilton College students. 

While national symptom numbers are rising, as more and more students battle anxiety, depression, and other conditions, Hamilton College is seeing much lower numbers than peer institutions – and the rise in conditions is moving at much slower rates.

“I think it’s because we have a treatment focus,” says Dr. Walden. “We're giving the correct dose of medicine, so to speak, at the right time.”

That doesn’t mean Hamilton College isn’t facing its own set of challenges. Psychiatric providers are hard to find, specifically psychiatric providers who understand the college population and can serve the students well. This is, in part, why Hamilton College has turned to Mantra Health. 

Working with Mantra has been great for psychiatric care. It has met our needs in terms of basic additional hours, but also in terms of finding someone who is a good fit for our population, someone who could bring a different personality, approach, and a different set of demographic characteristics to the role and function… That feels really really wonderful.

While higher education continues to face challenges – including provider burnout – Dr. Walden hopes that institutions will consider a new approach to care and find ways to validate students and their mental health needs through a broader set of resources. 

Students are increasingly broadening their definition of mental health, so why not shift the way we approach mental health? The institution has an opportunity to legitimize, validate, and talk more about students as psychological, emotional, and physical beings who have needs that can (and should be) met with a wider range of services and resources. Instead of limiting the counseling center to clinical services, Dr. Walden believes that mental wellness exercises, coping strategies, and other therapeutic offerings can also support students, especially those that may not need traditional therapy or psychiatry. 

“We can’t keep doing what we’ve been doing and expect the outcomes to be different,” Dr. Walden says. “We really need to have a different approach if this is going to be a sustainable space.”

Governor Phil Murphy recently announced $16 million in grants aimed at supporting mental health for higher education students across the state of New Jersey. This investment is a critical step towards addressing the issue of mental health in young adults, but how this money will be allocated – and what happens after it’s spent – will be critical in determining student outcomes, institution success, and, ultimately, benefits to taxpayers.

Mental health issues increasingly affect millions of college students nationwide, and New Jersey is no different. It’s setting off alarms inside the offices of school presidents and senior leaders. About 70 percent of college students in the state said their stress and anxiety increased as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic, including 76 percent of Hispanic, Black, American Indian, and Native Hawaiian/Pacific Islander students, according to a survey by the Office of the Secretary of Higher Education. In an unfortunate coincidence, 76 percent of students surveyed by Gallup-Lumina cited emotional stress as the reason they were considering stopping their degree programs, long supported by academic findings around mental health disorders leading to negative educational outcomes. All of this occurred with the backdrop that from 2017-2021, New Jersey higher education institutes experienced a nine percent decrease in enrollment. If schools fail to stem student mental health concerns, enrollment numbers will continue to drop.

Zooming out, investing in mental health is beneficial not only to students, but also to higher education institutions themselves. When students have access to high quality mental and emotional health services through their university system, they are more likely to stay in school and graduate, increasing their lifetime earnings. Reducing dropout saves lost tuition revenue, boosting job retention and enabling job creation in New Jersey. In fact, a study led by economist Dr. Daniel Eisenberg and shared in a Healthy Minds Network report demonstrates that New Jersey will see its investments in mental health yield $30 million in retained tuition at its higher education institutions and up to $60 million in increased future earnings of the students who graduate, boosting future tax revenues.

The majority of the grant money – $15 million out of the available $16 million – will be distributed to institutions to create partnerships with organizations who help institutions expand access to mental health services to students. With this much needed investment in social infrastructure, countless companies will come knocking that promise to provide much needed mental health services for the university and college students of New Jersey. Yet many of these companies simply repurpose service lines from bigger healthcare companies or will be a brand of telehealth company that cuts corners through their treatment model while promising “unlimited” therapy. Buyer beware. 

In reality, these groups are not properly equipped to tailor treatment for the unique experiences of college students or historically marginalized student populations, don’t collaborate with critical on-campus resources such as health and counseling centers, and shortchange students on length of treatment in session. Choosing a partner like this is the equivalent of buying snake oil instead of going to your cardiologist for chest pain.

Luckily, there are a few options for higher education institutions and their students when forming these partnerships. Among the qualities that schools should look for in prospective partners include proven integration into on-campus resources, a provider group specialized in working with emerging adults, and a company focused on the success of higher education constituents. These were the principles we founded Mantra Health with and put into practice with institutions across the country, from Penn State to Miami Dade College to New Jersey Institute of Technology. As a result, students in clinical care with Mantra reported a 40 percent lower likelihood of dropout due to mental health challenges after enrolling in therapy. Students in treatment over six sessions experience a reduction in dropout risk twice as improved as those just starting. 

The state of New Jersey is leading the way in making a long term investment into its students, schools, and the state itself, but it cannot stop here if we want to set our future generations and communities up for success. Investing in our students' mental health today is an investment that will yield positive benefits across society and our economy for decades to come. 

Investing In Higher Ed Mental Health: A Win-Win for Students & New Jersey