Author: Nathaan Demers, PsyD

Historically, the college counseling center has been the mainstay for student mental health support on campus. In addition to providing direct clinical services (i.e. one-on-one and group therapy), in the past two decades counseling centers have increased marketing and outreach efforts to reduce stigma associated with help-seeking behaviors and raise awareness for existing services. 

And these efforts have paid off – stigma has been reducing year over year and more and more students are aware of service offerings. However, these factors coupled with a dramatic rise in the number of students experiencing mental health concerns is putting significant strain on available resources. 

To keep up with demands, it’s essential that campuses expand their offerings beyond traditional clinical services and go further upstream to support students in building resilience and coping strategies prior to the development of clinical challenges. Doing so, though, requires cross-departmental support and working with diverse campus leaders who can advocate and embed these services within the student journey. 

An urgent need for comprehensive mental health care 

Seventy-five percent of students are saying they’ve considered leaving college at some point over the last six months due to emotional stress – and not surprisingly, as the college experience can be quite stressful. 

Students often have a mix of academic pressures, work responsibilities, and personal obligations, on top of social pressures such as making friends, establishing a sense of belonging, and determining a potential career path. This combination of factors, coupled with a challenging economy, a divisive sociopolitical landscape, and increasing socioeconomic barriers like food insecurity and financial instability, has contributed to students’ ongoing stress, anxiety, and feelings of depression. 

Today, 60% of college students meet criteria for at least one mental health condition, a 50% increase over the past decade¹ – and 81% of students in 2023 indicated that their mental health negatively impacted their academic performance in the prior four weeks.² With these extremely high rates of mental distress, connecting students with the right level of care has never been more important – and higher education leaders are starting to recognize this. Seventy-four percent of college presidents, for example, have cited decreased socialization skills as a major contributing factor to poor student mental health, another 68% cited loneliness, and 62% cited declining student resilience.³

While maintaining and/or expanding clinical offerings remains an important part of supporting students’ increased needs, students’ needs are changing – and our models of care need to adapt to include more preventative offerings and ways of triaging students to the most appropriate levels of care.  

If a student is experiencing loneliness or challenges with self-advocacy, for example, they can be appropriately served through peer support, an emotional wellness coach, or given self-paced psychoeducational modules rather than traditional one-on-one counseling. By reaching more students earlier in the mental health journey, institutions are able to reserve clinical capacity for those who need it most.

Investing in upstream, preventative services

It’s time to get serious about upstream, holistic interventions to ensure students don’t slip between the cracks. While counseling centers continue to provide essential services to students, they only have the capacity to serve a portion of the student body. In addition to expanding clinical capacity through hiring, many institutions are partnering with digital mental health providers to augment services and close existing gaps in care. 

One of the benefits of partnering with holistic telehealth providers is expanding offerings to include self-care, emotional wellness coaching, on-demand counseling, 24/7 crisis services, as well as after-hours therapy and psychiatry services. These services help serve the whole student body, providing those with low acuity the opportunity to engage in skills building, for example, but also ensuring that those with high acuity are met with more appropriate, high-quality clinical care. 

With telehealth, students can connect to more accessible, diverse care on their terms. When it comes to mental health, there’s no one-size-fits-all solution, which is why students benefit from more options for improving their mental health and well-being.

Making student mental health a campus-wide initiative

The counseling center continues to be an integral part of many student’s campus experience, but it can’t be the sole responsibility of the counseling center to address their entire student body’s mental health and well-being. Supporting student mental health and wellness requires moving beyond counseling and health services, working alongside student affairs, student success, and other support services such as residential life, athletics, diversity offices, etc.

We know student mental health is a major barrier getting in the way of student success – and is directly contributing to the burnout of academic advisors who are often the only campus professional meeting one-on-one with students each semester. Accordingly, advisors are often the first to learn about a student’s mental health challenges, with 80% of faculty and staff stating that they’ve had conversations about student mental health and 21% stating that supporting students in mental distress has negatively impacted their personal mental health.⁴ 

Integrating student mental health supports and associated referral mechanisms can bring these historically siloed departments together to promote and connect students to appropriate care, while also empowering faculty and staff with the tools they need to support students.

By meeting students’ needs further upstream institutions can inevitably increase student resilience and reduce downstream mental health crises. 

Research indicates that six percent of college students provided mental health support will be retained.⁵ At a private institution of approximately 20,000 students where the average college tuition is $42,162,⁶ that can add up to $51 million per year. Thus, getting upstream and supporting students with holistic mental health experiences has a tremendous ability to help students have a happier, healthier, and more successful student experience, while also increasing job satisfaction within counseling centers by curbing the influx of demands and associated waitlists. 

References:

¹ (2023 March 29). The Mental Health Crisis on College Campuses. NEA Today.
² The Healthy Minds Study 2022-2023. The Healthy Minds Network.
³ 2024 Survey of College and University Presidents. Inside Higher Ed.
⁴ The Role of Faculty in Student Mental Health. The Healthy Minds Network.
⁵ Eisenberg, D., Golberstein, E., Hunt, J. (2009). Mental Health and Academic Success in College. B.E. Journal of Economic Analysis & Policy 9(1)(Contributions): Article 40.
⁶ (2023 Sept. 20). See the Average College Tuition in 2023-2024. U.S. News.