While building care teams can feel overwhelming, many institutions have found it to be a critical component of their crisis prevention strategy. Often comprising numerous stakeholders from various departments on campus, a care team is able to identify, assess, and intervene when a student is experiencing a mental health crisis.

No matter if you have an existing care team or are looking to create one, you can utilize proven strategies and best practices to ensure your campus is prepared to address student mental health crises and promote mental well-being.

Overview of Care Teams on College Campuses

Along with promoting student mental health and well-being, care teams help to prevent and manage mental health crises and emergencies. A student in crisis may disengage from friends, exhibit aggressive or impulsive behaviors, and/or discuss suicidal ideation, among other signs and symptoms. 

Depending on the size of your institution, you may have one or multiple care teams who may be focused on handling:

• Low-level risk assessments
• High-risk threat assessment
• Behavioral interventions
• Crisis interventions

The biggest challenge in crisis management is coordinating efforts among multiple stakeholders across multiple departments. Establishing a central line of communication, hosting regular meetings, and building campus-tailored systems and processes is essential.

“What makes this work challenging is that every institution is different,” says Sharrika D. Adams, PhD, Assistant Professor of Practice, Higher Education in the School of Education at Virginia Tech, who, for many years, convened the Virginia Tech Care Team. “What works at a small liberal arts college isn’t going to work at a state public university, but knowing and understanding your partners is critical.”

Best Practices for Care Teams

There’s no one-size-fits-all approach to crisis and suicide prevention, but there are best practices which care teams can follow to be as effective as possible. 

For campus leaders who want to build or improve upon their existing care teams, here are some recommendations: 

• Coordinate with all major stakeholders. When making decisions for crisis management on campus, Dr. Adams suggests inviting all stakeholders into the discussion. Common stakeholders include counseling center directors, deans of student affairs, housing directors, and campus safety directors.
• Standardize your process. All protocols and processes should be thought out and communicated with all team members, so there’s no confusion and no student gets lost in the process.
• Establish regular check-ins. Setting up robust processes is great, but key stakeholders should meet regularly to discuss ongoing cases and assign any follow-up steps as needed. Dr. Adams suggests meeting weekly. 
• Change the team as necessary. You should expect the team to change. Not only is there high turnover in academia, but care team members may be at high risk for burnout. Every year, you should assess your care team members and expertise gaps, so you can remain as effective as possible.
• Invest in regular crisis prevention training. Training should be given to all faculty and staff, but especially care team members. Give members of your campus community regular opportunities to attend crisis and suicide prevention training. 
• Create a centralized reporting system. Multiple offices and departments will be involved in clinical and non-clinical interventions. To ensure everyone has access to the same information, streamline reporting. Ideally you’ll want to create one centralized system, which all relevant stakeholders can access.
• Maintain regular communication with external partners. In addition to key on-campus stakeholders, it’s important to build and maintain relationships with law enforcement officers, local social workers, telehealth providers, and healthcare providers in the community who may be engaging with students in crisis. 

“Even though it’s been recommended, many institutions still haven’t established cross-communication channels that are needed for crisis prevention, and they’re often caught off guard when something happens,” says Kurt Michael, PhD, Senior Clinical Director at The Jed Foundation (JED). “At scale, one of the challenges in focusing on the mental health crisis is not just connecting the dots across campus but sustaining those connections.”

Building a Comprehensive Mental Health Support System

According to The Healthy Minds 2022-2023 report, 20% of students have major depression, 28% have engaged in non-sucidal self injury, and 14% experienced suicidal ideation. The rates are highest among traditionally underserved and marginalized students. As of 2023, for example, 34% of LGBTQ+ individuals (ages 18-24) seriously considered suicide within the previous year. Those identifying as non-white (Indigenous, Middle Eastern, Multiracial, Latinx, Black, etc.) also reported higher rates of attempted suicide compared to their white counterparts.  

While these numbers are staggering, universities can support student mental health and prevent mental health crises from developing and escalating with a comprehensive mental health and wellness support system. This should include multiple pathways to care and an array of service offerings which can meet students’ needs. In addition to providing therapy, psychiatry, and 24/7 crisis support, institutions should also have the resources to connect students to self-guided wellness content, peer-to-peer support, coaching, and intensive outpatient programming (IOP), among other services.

“There is no one program that is going to prevent suicide or increase help-seeking among students. You have to do as many things as possible and really focus on systemic change,” says Maggie Mortali, MPH, Vice President, Programs and Workplace Initiatives at the American Foundation of Suicide Prevention (AFSP). She adds, “There has to be a large-scale investment with a wide range of approaches and over a longer period of time.”

Want to improve your crisis management and build better systems of support? Learn about Mantra Health’s comprehensive student mental health solutions including 24/7 Crisis Support and ConnectNow, which can be part of your system of care and help strengthen your campus care teams. 

Contact us for more information.