How Can We Solve the College Student Mental Health Crisis
a few years ago
i attended a conference that brought
together faculty members and
administrators
from universities all over the country
and as a psychologist who works in
higher education
i was eager to attend because one of the
goals of this conference
was to see if we could gain insight into
a question
that is on the mind of every college
administrator from coast to coast
which is how can we solve the college
student mental health crisis
now just a year before this conference
took place
the chronicle of higher education
surveyed more than a hundred college
presidents
asking them to report their most
pressing concerns outside of the
classroom
and according to the chronicle 66
of these leaders identified student
mental health as the
top issue which far outweighed any of
the other concerns that made the list
and this finding is not altogether
surprising when you consider that in
recent years
the proportion of students suffering
from depression and anxiety
has been skyrocketing well on the second
day of this conference
which was being held on a beautiful
college campus on the east coast
during a week with lovely fall weather
that was sunny and warm
i decided to play a little hooky and go
for a walk outside
and as i was making my way around campus
i happened upon the admissions office
where i was told an admissions
presentation was scheduled to begin just
minutes later
so out of curiosity i joined this group
of other campus visitors
and we were led to this admissions
presentation
which just so happened to be in the
exact same building as the conference i
was attending
the admissions presentation was upstairs
the conference where i was supposed to
be was
downstairs but it turns out that by
attending this admissions presentation i
wasn’t playing hooky at all
because it was there that i gained even
more insight into the college student
mental health crisis
than i did at the conference itself and
probably not for reasons the admissions
office would have expected
this admissions officer spent 45 minutes
telling us what made that institution
great
she told us all about the experiences
the students were having that were
great she shared stories of students
doing internships
and pursuing research with faculty she
told us all about the student
organizations the campus activities
the dorms the rec center the food
making quite a compelling case that
being a college student today
is great
but then i remembered the real reason i
was on campus that day
and it occurred to me that although this
admissions officer may have been telling
the truth
she wasn’t telling the whole truth
because
while she was upstairs painting this
idyllic picture of the college
experience
just downstairs were hundreds of faculty
members and administrators
discussing data sets like those from the
american college health association
showing that over the last year 66
percent of students
reported feeling overwhelming anxiety
and 46 percent of students reported
feeling
so depressed they could not function
which collectively was a glaring
reminder
that the portrayals of college that are
being delivered to prospective students
and the actual lived experiences of
students
in college are often vastly different
from one another
and that stark contrast could provide
some insight
into what has been fueling the college
student mental health
crisis one of the ways that
psychologists conceptualize happiness
is with a simple formula happiness
equals
what we have divided by what we want
in other words your happiness as a
college student
is determined not only by all of the
wonderful experiences you will
have during college it’s also affected
by what you
want college to be like and what you
expect
college to be like since 2014
i have been the faculty advisor for
washu’s peer counseling center
and at the end of every year i ask the
undergraduate co-directors of this
organization
what they believe to be the primary
driver
of today’s student mental health crisis
and reliably the one phrase that comes
up
year after year is unrealistic
expectations many students start college
without a realistic sense of what the
experience is
actually going to be like and it makes
sense why
many of these students spent the latter
half of high school
attending admissions presentations and
going on
campus tours each one with loftier
promises than the last
and those messages are compounded by the
cultural myths
that have been propagated in the movies
and on social media
and by society in general all of which
have sensationalized college
as the best four years of your life
and then those students get to college
and they face inevitable difficulties
and they compare their actual
experiences
with those lofty expectations they
developed
and very often they are left with no
other conclusion to draw
than that they are doing college
incorrectly or
even worse that they do not belong there
at
all now i certainly don’t mean to pick
on my friends in admissions
or to suggest that they are doing
anything wrong or that they need to be
doing anything differently
in fact i think it’s important that they
offer these presentations
to get students excited about college
but i also think it’s important for
prospective students
and their families to understand that
there’s more to
the story than just what you see on the
college admissions tour
or in the movies or on social media
and those other parts of the story have
got to be delivered from someone
somewhere so as a psychologist who has
spent the last decade working on a
college campus
this is my message to new students
first of all you absolutely should be
excited about all of the wonderful
experiences
and the classes and the professors and
the relationships and the adventures
that will fill the numerator of that
happiness formula
during your college years but the other
thing you should do
in the interest of your mental health
during college
is to be mindful about some of the other
expectations you are bringing with you
that could be over inflating the
denominator
of that formula because if what you want
is for college to be perfect and if you
visit a campus and you leave
believing that you have found the
perfect place and a destination where
you’re going to be happy all the time
i hate to be the one to have to break
this to you but if those are your
expectations
you very likely are setting yourself up
for disappointment
and at some point you’re going to end up
disillusioned
because if you’re doing college
correctly there are going to be hard
times you’re going to have roommate
conflicts
you’re going to take classes that leave
you feeling disappointed or that you
feel are unfair
you’re going to pursue extracurriculars
or internship experiences
that you have your heart set on that you
still don’t get to be a part of
and that’s the case no matter where you
go you’re going to face adversity
but one of the things i’ve learned from
studying the happiness of college
students over the years
is that the happiest students aren’t
happy all the time
rather the happiest students have
realistic expectations
about the challenges that are in store
for them during
college and they have thought about that
ahead of time
and they come equipped with the
strategies that will allow them to
cope effectively or at very least they
know who to turn to for help
in those moments remember
college is great but
part of what will make college great
will be the ways that you develop the
wherewithal
to overcome setbacks that come your way
so that you can stay on track toward
your dreams and aspirations
not only during college but also
throughout your life when i think back
to that conference i attended a couple
of years ago
about how to solve the college student
mental health crisis
i’m still not sure there’s anyone who
has the definitive solution
but i do think that if we can be more
open and upfront
with students about the kinds of
challenges they can expect to face
during college
along with the behaviors that will
proactively contribute to their
well-being
then maybe one day when we talk about
the mental health of college students
it will be less of a crisis and instead
have more to do with their resilience
their well-being
and their flourishing thank you
[Applause]