Sharon Mitchell:
I think that we really have to view whether it’s anxiety, depression, or anything. We need to review it on a continuum. You know, there’s, I had an anxious moment. I was nervous about something. And then on this other end could be, I can’t function in certain ways, whether it’s school or interpersonally, because of the level of anxiety that I’m experiencing. I think terms like anxiety and depression have become everyday language. And sometimes because of that, people don’t really appreciate that it could manifest itself in a lot of different ways. And also you may not see those ways. Cause I think some of the most anxious students are some of our high functioning, high achieving students who appear to have it all together. And while they’re able to perform internally, things are not good for them. The amount of turmoil, they feel, the amount of fear of failure.

Raechele Pope:
Hello and welcome to Student Affairs Now, the online learning community for student affairs educators. I’m your host Raechele Pope. Today we’re discussing college student mental health and with all that’s going on in the world, on our campuses and with our students, the timing couldn’t be better. We will be having this discussion with doctors, Drs. Sharon Mitchell, Marissa Floro, and Amy Reynolds. Student Affairs Now is the premier podcast and online learning communities for thousands of us who work in alongside or adjacent to the field of higher education student affairs. We release new episodes every week on Wednesdays. Find details about this episode or browse our archives at studentaffairsnow.com. Today’s episode is sponsored by Anthology. Transform your student’s experience and advanced co-curricular learning with Anthology engage. With engage you are able to easily manage student organizations, efficiently plan events, and truly understand student involvement to continuously improve your engagement efforts at your institution.

Raechele Pope:
Learn more by visiting anthology.com/engage. We’re also sponsored today by EverFi. How will your institution rise to reach today’s socially conscious generation. These students rate commitments to safety, wellbeing, and inclusion, as important as their academics and extracurriculars. It’s time to reimagine the work of student affairs as an investment, not as an expense. For over 20 years ever, EverFi has been the trusted partner for 1500 colleges and universities with nine efficacy studies behind our courses you will have confidence that you are using the standard of care for students, safety and wellbeing, with the results to prove it. Transform the future of your institution and the community you serve. Learn more at everfi.com/studentaffairsnow. So, as I mentioned, I’m your host, Raechele Pope. My pronouns are she, her, hers and I’m broadcasting from Williamsville, New York near the campus of the University at Buffalo, where I served as the Associate Dean of Faculty and Student Affairs and the University Diversity Officer for the graduate school of education.

Raechele Pope:
I’m also an associate professor in the higher education and student affairs program. University at Buffalo is situated on the unceded ancestral homeland of the Haudenosaunee people. Sharon Marissa, Amy, thank you for joining me today for this episode of Student Affairs Now and welcome to the podcast. So can you begin by telling us a bit about you, your current role on campus and a bit about your professional pathways? Marissa, I’d like to begin with you.

Marissa Floro:
Hi, I’m Marissa. I use she her pronouns and I work at the Weiland’s Health Initiative at Stanford University, which is on unceded land. And what we do at Weiland, we’re kind of like a counseling center, like a CAPs, like a counseling and psychological services, but specifically for trans and non-binary students. So through a trust we based from a Stanford alum who was gay and unfortunately died due to suicide. We have an entire trust dedicated to the mental health of students. And so that’s what has helped I’m able to be at Stanford doing kind of student mental health work.

Raechele Pope:
Thank you, Marissa. How about Sharon? How about, you go next?

Sharon Mitchell:
Hi, I’m Sharon Mitchell and my pronouns are she her hers. I am the senior director for student wellness and director of counseling services at the University of Buffalo. And what that means is the first, especially that first part I’m senior director of student wellness means that health services and health promotion, which is health education also report to me and that we take a holistic approach to student well-being at UB. And so those three offices often work very closely together and delivering care for students. I trained at the Ohio State university in counseling psychology. So I’m a counseling psychologist and have also trained or worked at the University of Delaware, Boston university. And I did my internship at Cal State Long Beach. So I literally have been coast to coast and my career and at different points have taught, but now that I’m doing all these other things teaching is not something that I have time for right now.

Raechele Pope:
I understand that. Thank you, Sharon. And Amy.

Amy Reynolds:
Hi my name is Amy and my pronouns are she her hers, and I’m really happy to be here. There’s some commonalities we have among the panelists. We’re all counseling psychologists. I studied counseling psychology at Ohio State with Sharon. Actually, we were in near by cohorts of each other. I’m currently a professor of counseling psych at the University of Buffalo. However, in addition to my PhD in counseling psych, I also got a master’s in student personnel at Ohio State, and my intention was always to work in a college counseling center. Once I got there and I’ve worked at a couple of different counseling centers, I did my internship also in California at UC Irvine. So we have that in common. And then I went on to work at the University of Iowa counseling center for four years. But I also went back and forth between faculty and counseling centers.

Amy Reynolds:
And finally put me back into faculty where I’ve been now for 23 years at UB, was the part of counseling centers that I was really drawn to the most was training. And so then I decided to make the permanent switch over to faculty. But I’ve always sort of said, I’m bilingual. You know, I speak student affairs and faculty because often as we know, they do not always understand or relate to each other as well as they could. And because these are, you know, I’ve lived in both worlds, my, some of my scholarship interests have overlapped. And so I wrote a book helping college students developing essential support skills for student affairs professionals, which was really about talking about not people who are counselors, because people work at co college counseling centers are student affairs professionals as well, but people who work in non-counseling oriented positions have the opportunity to be in helping roles with college students. And then it’s important that they have the competencies to do that not to be counselors, but to listen, active listening, to be able to make referrals, et cetera, and all that. I’ve also done some research that looks at the attitudes that student affairs professionals have towards helping competencies in the mental health issues of students. So right here, this is my jam, so I’m happy to be here.

Raechele Pope:
Okay. Thank you. Thank you all. And it’s really fascinating to hear all of these connections, not only among you and not only between the student affairs and the counseling field, but also just to hear your own connections which is which is really interesting to me. So thank you. You know, when I shared this topic with the host of Student Affairs, Now that we should really talk about some of the issues that are going on with students on campus some of the mental health issues we all jumped at, we said, absolutely this needs to happen. We’re reading all the things that we’re reading on Twitter what’s happened over the past year, but before that, how these issues were changing. So I want to begin with the most obvious, obvious question, which is what are those mental health issues affecting college students, and what impact do these issues have on their ability to succeed academically, socially and personally, and Sharon, I’m going to throw that to you first, if you don’t mind.

Sharon Mitchell:
Okay. So I would say that for the last almost decade the top two presenting concerns that bring students into the counseling center are anxiety and depression. At one point it was depression and anxiety, but more recently anxiety is sort of the number one concern. And this past year has not helped with that. We’ve had twin pandemics going on in this country, there’s the pandemic related to COVID, but there’s also been a racial reckoning that’s been going on in this country that is still ongoing, that has really impacted students. And so I would say that students are reporting, just feeling a high level of stress. There’s academic stress, but I think just there in just living during stressful times, and that that’s something that really serves as that is really been problematic for their sense of emotional wellbeing. So, and then as far as kind of what’s going on in our world certainly the racialized violence that didn’t start with George Floyd, but certainly because people were at home and able to watch TV and really pay attention brought to light an ongoing issue, both before his death and after his death.

Sharon Mitchell:
And it’s a very sort of personal experience, especially for a lot of our minoritized students. That in addition to just being in school which is stressful by itself, there’s that secondary layer of dealing with racism as it’s manifested in all these various forms and then kind of related there’s been the impact of what’s going on from a political and public policy perspective has also been very detrimental to students. Particularly our international students are undocumented students or students who are from families where their family members who are undocumented, just all of the public policy that has come out in the last five years or so have really made their sense of security about being a college student, very precarious. And so there, there’s just a lot that that’s happening for our students. That again, that contribute to those two things of anxiety and depression,

Raechele Pope:
Marissa, is there anything that you wanted to add to that, that you see similar or different, please feel free to jump in? This is a conversation.

Amy Reynolds:
Well, I would just add real quickly that, you know, I think that students have been dealing in particular added to the stress they’ve been dealing with, you know, to put a fine point on what Sharon said, trauma and dealing with trauma that can really affect their ability. And related to that, I saw an interesting thing on Twitter the other day, where there was some survey and large percentage of students of color are not looking forward to coming back on campus, you know, which at one level isn’t surprising, right? Because for many of them campus feels like a harmful place. And so that’s something that’s sort of keep in mind. And I guess the other issue two issues related to the last year, I think there are particularly important is reduced social support because people got zoomed out and I don’t think they had as many social supports as they needed to. And just the whole issue of grief and grieving. Grieving of a way of life in a way of being, but also grieving of death and loss. And all the things that have happened, I would say over the last five years in particular, but most heavily the last year. So I think it’ll be an interesting re-entry when almost all campuses I’m hearing about it going back in person in the fall where, so anything for you.

Marissa Floro:
Yeah. I mean, 100% with what you and Sharon both said, I think to maybe add a little bit to that. Yeah. I’m thinking of students that I work with where I mean, such a range of experiences of mental health, I suppose, like you could say like in some ways, like a lot of the folks that I work with are considering transition or considering lots of different ways in which to connect to their gender, for example. And for some folks that’s been amazing because they can actually do that by themselves. And they don’t actually need to be in contact with a lot of people in person. And they don’t get mis-gendered as much. And so for some of my clients, there’s been a kind of like, oh, I can actually focus on myself and connect to my own identities and processes of, of certain of certain things.

Marissa Floro:
And then on the, not necessarily on the other end, but like a very different experience of like, I can’t go back. You mentioned international students. I have a bunch of international students who like, are very afraid of having to go back and especially because of COVID because they’ve been out in the United States and not back at home, nor are they, is it safe to come out back at home, maybe ever. And so there’s a lot of lots and lots of tension and anxiety and fear. And I think to Sharon’s point about the anxiety, I mean, there’s just, I forget now that things that are like, kind of, at least on the west coast, like, you know, opening up and, and most folks are vaccinated where we are. But the uncertainty, the like just uncertainty on top of uncertainty of the past year and a half was like, it was just almost almost unmanageable.

Marissa Floro:
And in fact, for some folks, it definitely was considering how many other uncertainties there were in folks’ lives. And so, yeah, and, and also to Amy’s point about kind of social supports and just supports in general. So for my clients who were hoping to kind of start hormone therapy but they are now home. And so they don’t have access to that, or they can’t access that until they’re kind of outside of the purview of their parents. For example or for folks who were waiting to come out until they got to Stanford and now, unfortunately I’ve had to kind of really slow their hopes and expectations since they, they don’t want to admit it, as you said, like everyone’s zoomed out. They don’t want to go to a zoom room at like our student resources. But they also don’t have a lot of other supports that they’ve created because we just got to Stanford. So I think there’s just so many different ways in which this is maybe provided a little bit of space for some folks, but in totality, like just so much uncertainty, disconnection that kind of thing.

Raechele Pope:
You know, all of what you said is just fascinating and heartbreaking. You know, I think I was going to ask my second question I was going to follow up with was how has the pandemic affected, what is the experience of students and you so seamlessly woven in because that’s, it is the reality of what’s happening for so many students. I was struck by something. Amy said that there was this large percentage of students of color in particular who were not looking forward to going back to campus. Now I have seen this on Twitter, but I didn’t see it about students. I saw it about particularly black folks, not wanting to go back to the office, whether that office was on campus or in a corporate world, because their experience of work via zoom was so much easier. They weren’t dealing with the other stuff. And sort of like Marissa said, I can focus on me. Right. but to hear our students are experiencing that as well. In the sense of, for all of the things that the campus is supposed to provide for students, but students are recognizing that I can do my academic work and not have to deal with someone else’s response or reaction to me. And that being a huge mental health concern that, that, I don’t know for me, I guess it’s just depressing. Don’t do counseling on me, just, it is.

Marissa Floro:
It’s just really sad. And I think too, something we were talking about before, but just the influx and demand for clinicians and especially clinicians of color. I think really puts it at least for me as one of the kind of out clinicians of color on Stanford’s campus of how necessary that feels and how like pretty urgent some of that, like folks want space and yet there’s so little opportunity or maybe trusted folks or trusted the spaces to kind of hold people. And so that has absolutely been a struggle, not only to connect with folks like when we were in person, but also now that we’re in zoom university of how to kind of not only find folks and outreach to them, but at least at Stanford, there was a lot of like zoom bombing in the beginning of COVID, which did not help at all, because even on online spaces, like folks did not feel safe. And and yeah, and so I’m just kind of reiterating really just the need for support and the lack and the very understandable fear of folks kind of coming back to campus. And I think there’s also been maybe like an intensity for some other folks around like really staying having a lot of conviction around like fighting critical race theory or whatever that might be. And so people really fearing coming back to campus with that environment as well.

Raechele Pope:
Sure, well, one of the things I look at is this layering effect, you know Sharon started out by saying the two most presenting issues that students are bringing when they come in, are anxiety and depression. And then I’m hearing this layered effect of the same level of anxiety and depression that most students experience, and then how the pandemic and all of its permeations has affected students of color. Our LGBTQ students are, our students who are dealing with undocumented students or families and all of these things and just the intersectionality of it all and the multiple identities. And I think that that would make the jobs for both those of you who work in the counseling center. And those of us who are counseling center adjacent, do you know those trying to do the helping that Amy talked about in both her book and in her introduction how do we get to that? It sounds like the need is so great,

Sharon Mitchell:
You know, before we go much further, I did want to, I’ve been thinking a lot about the survey. You talked about Amy, where you were saying that number of students of color didn’t want to return to campus. I think we also need to talk about there’s a lot of diversity in terms of campuses and student populations. And so actually the practitioner scholar in me wanted to drill down in that, to go, what, which, what else about these students and their institutions make the difference? Because I was thinking if it’s a primarily, primarily Hispanic serving institution, do the Hispanic students, there not wanting to go back or, you know, is it when it’s a predominantly white campus? So I, I do think we need to think about what was the campus climate and culture in the first place and how that might be contributing to, oh, it’s kind of nice to have a break from dealing with microaggressions on a regular basis.

Sharon Mitchell:
And then different campus are resourced differently to, you know, I’m just thinking about you know, Marissa, what you were saying about Stanford, having a whole separate counseling center to deal with the needs of the queer community. Like not everybody has that. And so, so yes, while we’re talking about in general, I think we also need to make sure that we recognize their differences. For example, there are schools this year where the, for services went way up or stayed the same, and there were schools where it went way down. And I think you have to understand you know, is it a commuter school? You know, is it still primarily a person, all those things. So let’s not lose sight of that. There, there are some, some differences there. So

Amy Reynolds:
That’s an important that nuance is important when I read it, I assumed it was PWI, predominantly white institutions where, where they were feeling that way. But I also, I don’t want to be too critical, but I think, you know, students of color are quite savvy and they know that even though campuses have woken to the needs and the issues of being an anti-racist campus, I can’t, you know, there’s a lot of campuses that are saying that’s their goal. You know, sometimes so there’s been this heightened awareness. And so at one level, students might want to feel hopeful about that, but then, you know, we don’t know how it’s gonna play out. And again, that’s very specific to institutions and areas about that. So many campuses are starting to address these issues differently or at all, maybe. But sometimes they’re not addressing the issues that most directly affect the students, you know, and their wellbeing. And they focus on things that maybe if they ask the students. So I have heard a lot of counseling centers are, and you can tell me if this is true, Sharon, especially from your larger perspective, you know, are increasing the numbers of providers, especially, and maybe UB’s already had this, but providers particularly to address the needs of certain populations. Is there a growing trend in that way or

Sharon Mitchell:
I, what I will say, cause I was just looking at this yesterday is that overall counseling centers gained more positions than they lost. So I do think there is an investment. I also think that places have had to be creative in terms of how do we address our, our, the needs of all of our students in particular students of color, because there are places that are just going to be a tough sell in terms of recruitment. Like, and I don’t want to name any places because I don’t want to make anybody feel bad about their location, but there are just certain places that are going to be a tough sell. So then it becomes, how do we make sure that the staff that we have are culturally informed in how they deliver services? How can we be innovative? Like there’s some campuses where they might not be able to actually doing tele mental health has sort of opened people’s eyes to other possibilities, like, okay, we might not ever be able to convince somebody to come here, but could we contract for somebody to do teletherapy with our students?

Sharon Mitchell:
Who’s a person of color. So looking at other ways to you know, address the needs that yes, increasing the number of counselors of color would be fantastic, but not everybody’s going to be able to do that, but they still need to take care of their students. And so they’re going to have to figure out the solutions that will work for their campus,

Raechele Pope:
Right. And developing competence. I know that on our campus, we had, I was talking to some students in particular I was talking to a group of Asian students, both Asian American and Asian national, and talking to them about their experience. Not long after the shootings of the Asian folks and all of this anti-aging stuff that was happening in a really quick period. And a student said that she went into the counseling center and she was talking and they’d never brought it up to say, how are you? You know, and this was, I mean, and she was so fearful and depressed and hurt by all of this and then to have that not brought up at all. So when you’re talking about this cultural confidence, cultural competence, cultural education, that how we do these things, and it just really needs to change the way we teach.

Raechele Pope:
And we teach trained folks who are dealing with these issues to not assume this because in my situation not assumed because I’m teaching this course, the people that don’t have access to the outside world and how that, how that hurts them. So, so there are so many ways that we have to do this differently and put it in the, in the forefront. I’m wondering if there’s one other issue I want to bring up and I know we have other questions to deal with, but I want to talk about this anxiety as a non clinician, myself, you say the two primary issues are anxiety and depression. I think most non counselors can hear depression say, oh, pay attention to that word because that’s that’s important. That’s scary. That’s something that needs to be dealt with immediately. I still think there are so many people who hear anxiety and they don’t understand the depth of what anxiety means.

Raechele Pope:
They don’t understand that a student isn’t just feeling this minor anxiousness. Though some may be right, but the fact that anxiety is growing, changing and deepening. And I’m wondering if there’s, if you can share with the audience, why anxiety, what, what students mean by anxiety? What do we see in anxiety and why is that so important for us to deal with and to recognize and to say, it’s not just, oh, they’re just a little nervous about going to class, but it’s, there is a, a greater sense of anxiety. I’m not sure if I’m expressing that real well. This is what my not being a counselor doesn’t help, but I think people downplay what anxiety means and what it can mean when students are presenting that.

Marissa Floro:
Yeah, I think you’re completely right. And especially if folks have different maybe conceptualizations of mental health or maybe some stigma around mental health and they’re from a kind of like, framework of like, oh, well I didn’t have it that hard. Or like just, just work through it or whatever, you know, whatever some of those phrases might be, yeah, I’m thinking of to Sharon’s point again, like a lot of the folks that we see we were talking about their anxiety and how it manifests and where it’s coming from and what informs it and how they can manage it. And I, I mean, I’m thinking of some folks where the anxiety is it’s debilitating. It’s, it’s to a point where like they can’t share in class, they don’t even want to go to class. Was talking to a client just yesterday who was, mis-gendered like three times within like a 24 hour period and completely had like, had to remove themselves because of like the nervousness of being discriminated against something bad having happen and the anxiety of having to advocate for themselves and how difficult that is.

Marissa Floro:
And so they had to remove themselves from something that’s a learning environment that they need to be at. And I’m thinking for folks too, that like anxiety can also look so many different ways. And so for some folks, it can be like a paralysis for some folks. It can be like kind of not to like overuse the term dissociation, but just like like not being able to be present. And for some other folks as well, like really leaning into other coping mechanisms that do help with the anxiety, but maybe do not help in the long-term or for maybe from some of their other goals. So I’m thinking about somebody who who is undocumented and doesn’t have a pathway to citizenship. They unfortunately kind of missed the I think it arrived too early to be DACA eligible.

Marissa Floro:
And so there’s no pathway for them. There’s no pathway unless they were to, you know, anyway. And so their anxiety is just so high. And especially as some of you have mentioned in the past five years has been unbelievably high about being kind of found out or outed or, you know, deported and their anxiety keeps them from sharing about anything about their family life. So connecting with others is very difficult for them because they don’t want to lie, but they also don’t want to out themselves or their family the anxiety around like why around like career paths, like about, so basically about the future, the anxiousness. And I’m like, well, I don’t even know if I can get a job after Stanford. I don’t even know how I’m able to get I’m going to be able to stay here. And so for them, like, I mean, using substances is one of the quickest ways to kind of allow for them to be present.

Marissa Floro:
And of course that brings us, you know, a whole host of other issues as well. And so for them then anxiety about not being able to get citizenship because of the substance use. There’s just so many ways in which like some of these things just build and build upon each other, making it really difficult to manage one thing, let alone like 20 things. So I don’t know if I added way too much there, but I think, I think for some folks, I’m just thinking of how they’ve tried so hard and they have like survived and thrive to some degree in trying to navigate all these systems. And yet the anxiety is so overwhelming or consuming that they they’ve had to make do in ways that also now need to be attended to in some other ways

Sharon Mitchell:
I think that we really have to view whether it’s anxiety, depression, or anything. We need to review it on a continuum. You know, there’s, I had an anxious moment. I was nervous about something. And then on this other end could be, I can’t function in certain ways, whether it’s school or interpersonally, because of the level of anxiety that I’m experiencing. I think terms like anxiety and depression have become everyday language. And sometimes because of that, people don’t really appreciate that it could manifest itself in a lot of different ways. And also you may not see those ways. Cause I think some of the most anxious students are some of our high functioning, high achieving students who appear to have it all together. And while they’re able to perform internally, things are not good for them. The amount of turmoil, they feel, the amount of fear of failure.

Sharon Mitchell:
They feel may not be seen by other people unless they’re verbalizing that because you would know it. And one of the things that we see a lot in college students is they actually think that they’re the only person who’s feeling a certain way or experienced having the same college experience because people don’t always share it what’s going on for them internally. So I do think that for people who are not professionals, I think that you know, realizing that no two people who are experiencing anxiety or depression look alike. So just because you don’t see what might be a problem, does it mean there that it’s not there and that we need to respect if somebody’s saying something’s problematic for them, that it is. And, or, or just because you’re able to manage your anxiety doesn’t mean that everybody’s able to do that without some sort of support or assistance. And so just having more compassion for those differences, once again, I think is really important.

Amy Reynolds:
And I think the context real quick, Raechele, I’ll be real quick, but the, you know, there’s some generational differences. I think, I think young adults are much more open about talking about some of their mental health issues. Stigma has gone down certainly in some ways, not in all communities, not in all places, but generally overall, I think it’s gone down and students more open to talk about these things. Some of the times and sometimes staff or faculty they’re looking at it through the lens of when they grew up and how they viewed mental health issues. And so there, isn’t always an understanding that we’ll just talk it out, just get through it, you know, and, and I’m not saying generational, it’s all of that, why that’s there. But I do think that college students share with each other in particular openly when they may be struggling sometimes what medications they’re on in ways that I know when I was in college, nobody was talking about those issues at all. So I think there’s lots of factors that can not only affect the students, but affect how the professionals who are working with the students may be perceiving them, which then affects how they interact with them.

Raechele Pope:
Right. I think that that’s the key cause what I really I think is very helpful. And perhaps generationally to understand that these words mean something. I liked the way that Sharon put them on a continuum and that, because I use the term anxiety, I might not be using it in the same way that other students are. And that’s why I thought it was really important to talk about what anxiety is and what depression is and how it can look different and what it means. And Amy, I think your point about this generational difference, I am stunned by some of the things I see people sharing on Twitter. I mean, those are things I might share with friends maybe, right. And the students and it’s amazing. They don’t have that stigma attached to it. I mean, I, again, I went to college when you didn’t really go to the counseling center, you know, it had to be really major to go. And now there were still, there was a period where students were signing up for counseling the same time they were signing up for their classes. It was that normalized for them. And that’s a good thing, but I’m not so sure the rest of the campus understands and, or gets that or how they talk about their, their concerns without being viewed through a lens that is not the same lens that they’re using. Yeah. Something

Marissa Floro:
Yeah. Something to just add in here, I’d love that Sharon kind of mentioned the kind of like perception that someone must be doing fine because they’re academically performing or whatever it might be at Stanford. There’s actually like a name for it. It’s called Stanford Duck Syndrome where, cause, you know, when you see ducks, they look on the surface, they look like they’re just gliding, but underneath the water, they’re like frantically just trying to stay afloat. And so it’s, we have a name for that at Stanford, which I think is good because it, it, you know, it puts a name to an experience so that hopefully folks are feeling normalized. And yet there is also this cultural expertise, I don’t know for other colleges, but this like kind of campus culture expectation that like you shouldn’t be high-performing and yeah, if you have anxiety who doesn’t like, I, in some ways, I wonder if there’s also for some folks that like, oh yeah, we all have anxiety or we all have like depression like that.

Marissa Floro:
Like, but you should still be performing just still getting eight internships and like all of these accolades. And so I think, yeah, anyways, so just as at Stanford it’s it’s yes. I think that there’s a, both, there’s a both and multiple realities happening where folks are really struggling and they also can’t feel like they struggle. They can’t show that they’re struggling. And also it’s been so normalized that it also, maybe folks aren’t getting help because like, oh, everyone just has depression. But yeah, so I’m just really like trying to also hold all of those different complications and experiences that folks are having.

Amy Reynolds:
I’ve heard of undergraduate students who get an accommodation for mental health issues that faculty are like, I shouldn’t, you not comfortable giving them accommodations for mental health issues. Like they’re like, I may have to turn off my camera at certain points, like in this past year. Because you know, and, and they get a letter from the from the office, it gives, you know, asked the faculty and faculty are kind of like, I don’t know about that. And you know, that just those messages are not healthy and helpful for those students. Right.

Raechele Pope:
I love Marissa that you put the image for us of the ducks, with the the words of Sharon, you know, saying, you know, some of our most high performing students are really struggling under the water and that’s what we don’t see. And I think that that’s an important thing to see, Hey, I wanna ask you another question. And this is about all of those student affairs folks who are not counselors. What can the role of student affairs professionals who are not trained as counselors or psychologists play in addressing more effectively the mental health issues of college students in student affairs. We’ve always done this right to the side, but what are some tips, suggestions, or whatever that you might have for us in doing this? More effectively.

Sharon Mitchell:
I think that the most important thing is to let students know that you see them, you know, that I think that students, some students feel like people don’t see them, they don’t see their pain. And I think not just student affairs professional, but faculty in general, don’t always lean into like and show students I’m concerned. I see some things that I’m a little worried about and engaging in that conversation. Because when you don’t, it just reinforces. If somebody is thinking nobody cares and nobody sees me that only reinforces that belief. And so no, one’s asking you to provide mental health care. We’re just asking you to show that you see their humanity and that you care about them as a person, not just as a student who may or may not be doing well in your class, but you’re concerned about something that you’re noticing that’s different from, from how they normally are or, or, or even if it’s not different, but it seems somewhat problematic letting them know that you see them and that you’re concerned. I think is the most important thing that, that a faculty member could do. Sure.

Amy Reynolds:
I know for me, I mean, I have a whole list. I have a whole list partially because of maybe some of my research, but you know, all student affairs professionals hopefully in their classes, but not everyone who works in student affairs has come through and gotten a student affairs degree. Right. So it’s important that they developed sort of basic helping skills, like listening, attending, empathy, those kinds of basic things that help someone feel like they can tell you their story, right. So they can feel heard. And then you also have to develop effective referral skills, right. And know who know people in the counseling center connect to them, know how to refer a student follow up with that student after you’ve made that referral, don’t just refer them, say I’m done there, it’s their turn. Because these students live in multiple spaces and morals.

Amy Reynolds:
Every office should call up the counseling center staff and asked to be trained in these skills, right. In case that they weren’t, because I think they’re really, really important and to have opportunities to practice. I also think it’s not all about pathology. You know, we should be more prevention and wellness oriented so that we can create supports for students before they start to unravel right before they get overwhelmed. And most campuses I think have students of concern committees. Right. and I think it’s important to utilize those and to talk about, because you may think a student’s just struggling in your space, but in fact, you may find out that they might be struggling in multiple spaces and maybe they need a bigger or different kind of intervention than what you were thinking. And then the other thing I wanted to say was, you know, rely on mental health services for after hours and know what they are, whether your counseling center has an on-call system, whether you have a community crisis center, know what those are, so you can utilize them and, you know, call campus or community police for mental health concerns.

Amy Reynolds:
Right. really try to engage with mental health professionals. If a student is really struggling, which seems to always happen, you know, after midnight. And, and so you have to know what to do in those circumstances, especially obviously if you work on live on campus or work in residence life that’s particularly important. So that’s sort of my big list, but I don’t know what you all think if you have other ones to add to it or things to say about my, some of those ideas.

Marissa Floro:
I think having the structure in place so that when somebody does interact with the student, that they’re worried about that they don’t, they also not only are feeling overwhelmed by the student and their emotion, but and whatever might be going on, but also like, who do I call and when do I call and can I call? And so, I mean, Stanford you know, a bunch of campuses have a different systems in place. So we have like a red folder system where on this, like try to condense it. But on this red folder is like a bunch of different community centers, mental health resources, and even some like scripts to kind of like help people find the language to your point about kind of just some active listening or some basic empathy as Sharon was saying like trying to kind of put all that for student affairs, personnel and faculty.

Marissa Floro:
And I think something that maybe I would just add to what you both have shared is also just like maybe a little bit accountability, I think has maybe some strong or different connotations nowadays, but more kind of like maybe some motivation or encouragement to learn about some of the things that students are very much like intertwined. And so I’m just thinking in the past year, you know, a lot of my students are talking about systemic oppression and intersectionality and dismantling settler colonialism, which is great, and that really informs their therapy and their world. And a lot of student affairs. I mean, just a lot of folks, not just student affairs, folks of like, what are you talking about? And so I, and a lot of the work that we do is also in doing that work and trying to inform folks about this is like, what gender can look like.

Marissa Floro:
This is what gender has looked like historically. And I’m really trying to give people the opportunities to like, be in, be engaged with the things that our students are also very much into. Well, some of them are very much engaged with which I think helps to Amy, something you said earlier around like the student asks for accommodations. Why should, I don’t want to give that to them? Like seeing, seeing kind of what the lived experiences of students just like Sharon said is like humans and whole people. And some of the different concepts that they’re talking about versus these concepts as tools to get away with things, or like some type of like just don’t want to do the work. So yeah, I think it’s not just a thought someone already said, like, it’s not just pathology. Counteracting some of the pathology, but like really wanting to engage in immersing what students are talking about. Cause I think that does help. Not only understand, but also provide, provide empathy and provide like a a welcoming listening space.

Raechele Pope:
Sure. I think that’s really helpful. I think one of the things that I would perhaps, and you folks can correct me if I’m wrong is, and perhaps it stems from something that you’ve all said, but it’s just asking questions of students, you know, before we make assumptions about what’s going on, the student who falls asleep in class, and you just assume that they’re bored and asking them, Hey, I’ve noticed, you know, you’ve been falling asleep in class lately, is everything okay? Are you feeling okay? And then you might find out that something’s going on at home or that they’re keeping, they’re doing three jobs just to be able to be, to afford to be in your class or the student who is late all the time, because they can’t get to campus. For example, you know, a time when we’re on campus.

Raechele Pope:
And sometimes just asking our students, I’m always done when I have a student. And I know something about that student, that’s pretty significant that other faculty might not know where that other student affairs practitioners might not know because I took the time to ask a question that opened the door. So it’s that seeing them, not only when they’re hurting, but seeing them to ask these questions and to, to find out what’s going on before I make those assumptions about why there’s this behavior is happening. So I think that’s something all of our student affairs and faculty can be doing.

Sharon Mitchell:
Right. I was also just gonna kind of circle back to what Amy was saying about prevention. And I disagree slightly about the students of concern because that’s not prevention to me. That’s somebody at risk prevention is sort of a whole campus. Like how do I promote how do I promote mental health of our students and wellbeing of our students so that they have the tools and that they need to not get to a place where people are worried about them. So for me, prevention means you know, encouraging students to engage in self care. Reflecting on how you as a faculty member actually might be contributing to a student’s lack of wellbeing and figuring out. And that’s not to say, because I think people confuse that with like somehow reducing or diminishing their academic standards. And I don’t think it has to be that way, because I think actually you might get more out of students if they are healthy versus not healthy.

Sharon Mitchell:
And so it’s like, how do you do both and again about resources. I think that a lot of times people are so reluctant to like, you know, find out what’s going on with students that when there is, you know, whether a student’s crying or whatever it is that automatic thought is, refer them to the counseling center, instead of thinking about, you know, do we have health promotion? Do we have things that focus on stress management? Are there other resources that the student might need and actually be more open to then committing to some, to you know a therapy relationship versus, you know, is there a workshop on, you know, is there yoga? Is there meditation, are there other things that students could be doing to sort of manage their stress? And then again, as faculty it’s like, what are the demands that I placed on students?

Sharon Mitchell:
And are they reasonable? I mean, one example comes to mind that sometimes I’ve worked with coaches who are just appalled that their athlete has an eating disorder, but this is the same person who’s told them they should have zero body fat. Right. Which the two don’t go together, you know, it’s like, you don’t naturally have that, that student is going to try to do something to please you, to give you what you want so they can play. But then don’t be surprised when they develop an eating disorder. So it’s also about like, you know, setting realistic goals and expectations for students as well.

Amy Reynolds:
I was going to say, and you know, I’m no longer in the counseling center world, although I still consider counseling center people, my people but they’re doing so many innovative things right now. And you know what you said, Sharon just made me think about how many campuses are doing embedding staff into various places like athletics, right? Like certain academic units as a way to make sure that there’s more easy access, especially for athletes who have such limited time in their schedule to get to get involved with counseling between their academics and their sports. Right. And so there’s just a lot of things. And UB’s, one of those places that has those embedded relationships, I don’t know if Stanford does as well, but it seems to be more common now.

Raechele Pope:
Well, that’s interesting that you raised that because that was the next area I was going that, you know, counseling centers have existed in many ways from my perspective in the same way as on campus in a very useful and helpful function, but here is where the counseling center is. And then I’ve heard about this embedding where a counselor is sort of placed in another office, you know, to in like athletics or maybe in the residence halls so that students get to know that person, students get to know them and sort of the folks that are working there so that they can make the referrals more easily and they can see more easily what’s going on. And I know some campuses are doing some other innovative approaches to counseling centers and to how to get to students. There’s a, there’s a campus. Well, first of all, for mercy, your place where there is not an entire office that is dealing with these issues outside of the direct counseling center, but it’s having, but there is clearly a connection there and there’s another place in California.

Raechele Pope:
I’m assuming it’s I can’t remember. I think it’s USC or UCLA where they’ve set up a counseling center. I can’t remember which I know they’ll have a fit with them listening to this. Cause it was big difference between USC and UCLA, but that there’s this there’s another center that is dealing with the issues of students of color and primarily I think it’s students of color. And so then when, and there are psychologists there and other mental health professionals who are working to bridge in a sense between a counseling center, but really focused on these issues of the students of color and dealing with issues like the, the myriad of microaggressions and resilience. And, but really having a space where these students can go and say, I can cut through the shorthand cause you know, what I’m talking about now helped me figure out the skills that I need to deal with this, or how can I report this behavior. And I’m just wondering if you have some other ideas or that you’ve seen some new and innovative approaches to how universities are addressing the mental health issues on campus, or just some ideas that you have that you think this is the way we shift this and the direction we should be headed. Yeah. It was a UCLA RISE center that I was talking about RISE center.

Sharon Mitchell:
Well, I mean, I certainly think having student advisory boards because I think sometimes as professionals, we think we know what students want and I think we need to be talking more to students, not just the students who are coming into our office, but getting a broader perspective of the campus culture and also of their impressions of the counseling center. And so, you know, doing things like climate surveys specifically related to mental health. And I think that kind of what I was talking about a little bit earlier, there’s something called stepped care where there’s matching the intervention to what’s actually needed for that particular student. And not assuming that therapy is the only thing that you can offer a student who may be, you know, their emotional wellbeing. Maybe, maybe not be where it’s at. So people are doing things like wellness, coaching, that’s much more sort of circumscribed to a specific goal or issue that a student has.

Sharon Mitchell:
So it’s not about, you know, needing to know all about your early childhood experiences or anything like that. It’s more about how do I plan and make put in steps to reach specific goals that I have. And so I think we’re, we’re doing lots of different things. And then again, that holistic approach team approach, you know, so not treating an eating disorder just at the counseling center, but having an eating disorder treatment team that involves nutritionists and dieticians and physicians and making sure that the whole, a whole team is around a student in order to support you know, the needs that they may have,

Marissa Floro:
I’m feeling really validated, with what Sharon shared because we, so yeah. In terms of the kind of embedded counselors, Stanford does that the same where they have like these designated psychologists, like the business school, the school of medicine the law school, and we also have a system called CAPs connects where one of our caps clinicians will go to, for example, like have hours at El, which is like Latin X student center, the Asian-American activity center, as well as Tara, which was like an unofficial LGBTQ dorm. So we would all, depending of course, on our identities and our work and the communities we serve, we would staff those hours so that so that it folks didn’t feel like going to caps because of understandably like historical context as to why you wouldn’t want to go to a counseling center.

Marissa Floro:
But you could go see someone who is somebody who potentially represents some of your experience at a place that you have more trust. So and we are also not at caps, like on purpose. Like we were, we have space outside of the counseling center building too. And also like what Sharon said, we also have wellness coaches, which were only introduced, I think about a year and a half ago. And they are overrun because they, because they provide a complimentary and yet separate service, which is really helpful for folks who don’t want to go or who can’t go to therapy for whatever reason. And then we’ve tried and I want to make sure to give my like counseling center colleagues, like, you know, a shout out, who’s I think at UC Berkeley now, but we worked together at UC Santa Barbara, knowing that, you know, certain communities have different relationships with mental health and mental health treatment, having a drop-in space for Asian-American and Pacific Islander students, because therapy was not going to be an option, let’s say, but if you came to talk about issues and there was like free food, then like, yeah, like I could drop in and like I’m hungry.

Marissa Floro:
So might as well just go. And so that is actually that model worked super well there, and same thing with different, different subsets of the LGBTQ community at Stanford as well, having like we have a questioning group, so you don’t have to, like, it’s not therapy, it’s just a space for you to actually more honestly, it’s more, just a place for you to meet your peers and know that you’re not alone, but, you know, we held it in the per student resources center, not at caps, not at other places. And so really just trying to meet students where they are and feel a little bit safer. We also do climate surveys and Weiland in particular does a needs assessment every single year to see what do students want. All of our programming comes from that survey. We have some trouble getting that survey out, but I think that, like that is kind of like, I don’t want to just be spending a lot of time creating services or thinking about these programs as students don’t actually even want.

Marissa Floro:
So we tried to also provide some like non-Western space as well. So that was like yoga. That was meditation. That was relaxation. And trying to also like connect with other folks who were already doing that as Stanford’s campus, as well as people off campus, too. So trying to do all of those things to help our students in a lot of, in a lot of the different ways that they wanted support and CAPs also tried. And I know a lot of different counseling centers were doing this too, having video, like video workshops so that you wouldn’t have to come and be on camera, but you could kind of like watch something like on your own time and learn some skills and strategies. Yeah. And I, and I think, I feel like I’m talking a lot, but I think maybe the last thing I’ll say is I loved, I just loved the idea of like collaboration that Sharon talked about.

Marissa Floro:
And especially Stanford is like notoriously decentralized. And so you’ll find out someone was doing like pretty much the same program. We just did like all year, but they were just doing it like at recreation. And so like really trying to connect with folks to like, not only be more efficient, but then you can like actually reach folks. So for example, a lot of folks aren’t signed on to our mental health listservs, but the majority of campus gets the list serves from like the gym, like the recreation system. So just by getting one of my programs on there, I immediately had like 50 respondents versus like the two I wouldn’t normally get. So I think the collaboration is super key just to even get the word out as to what supports might be offered that students wouldn’t even know about. Otherwise, you

Sharon Mitchell:
Know, I can’t believe, I didn’t say this teletherapy is a new thing that is not going away. And that actually, if you’d asked me a year and a half ago, if I was interested, I was like, I would have said, Nope. Because my training is like, you know, it’s a relationship you gotta be there. And what I have found is I think a lot of students actually are, will prefer in-person therapy. However, when it comes to things like assess accessibility, it is really good for students who may have mobility issues. It may be helpful to students who have other types of audio, visual kinds of issues because there’s so many tools you can use within a teletherapy platform. But also it’s good for non-traditional. Students are really busy graduate students who can’t our office is sort of out of the way.

Sharon Mitchell:
So when you say you’re going to have a counseling session, you’re really committing to two hours that the time is going to take you to get there, your actual therapy session and the time it’s going to take you to get somewhere else. And so if somebody, you know, this past year, people literally were, you know, snuggled up with their Teddy bear or whatever, you know, and the time that it takes you to do all that, if you don’t have a lot of time, it’s actually really convenient for students. And so I do think it’s an attractive option for some students. And so I feel like for many counseling centers, they’re going to move forward with some type of hybrid model.

Amy Reynolds:
Just to add a few more things. I think as I think has been reflected in our conversation today, counseling centers are getting more and more involved with the EDGI work on campuses. You know, I know what you be. We offered healing groups over the past year for a variety of reasons and opportunities to, to be involved in those campus efforts. And also for people who don’t know their counseling centers offer an array of amazing groups that often are very skill oriented. I’m thinking a lot of the DBT groups that offer that students, like you said, Sharon don’t need to go into one-on-one therapy. They can go into a group, learn certain skills or be in a support group with other people. We have tea time for international students at our diversity center or so, so something similar to what you’re talking about. So yeah, I don’t want to interrupt

Raechele Pope:
You a second. You use two acronyms that I’m not so sure everybody’s going to know that EJI.

Amy Reynolds:
Okay. Equity, diversity, justice, and inclusion. Right. So DBT, yeah. Sorry about that. Dialectic behavior therapy. You

Raechele Pope:
Can keep that as an acronym, just explain it.

Amy Reynolds:
It’s, it’s teaching skills to help people who may have trouble managing distress and just feel flooded with emotions and learning skills to help them more effectively do that so that they can be successful academically so they can calm down their nervous system, be in their body in a better way. So all of those things are important. And again, it used to be counseling centers used to have intake sessions, which sort of always implied that you were taking everybody into your services. And I think a lot of counseling centers aren’t using that model anymore. And they’re using, you know, sort of like a consultation period where you’re, you’re meeting with someone you’re finding out their concerns. And then you’re figuring out, like Sharon said earlier, the steps, like what do you need most? So, you know the counseling centers of today are nothing like when I was a senior in college and went to a little tiny two room, two place in the basement of a building on my campus. It’s a totally different world. So many campuses have huge counseling centers. Like how many people are on your staff, Sharon?

Sharon Mitchell:
It depends on how you count. So I’m going to say 24 senior staff folks, for a campus that’s 31,000 and then we have a fairly large training program as well. So,

Amy Reynolds:
But I know some counseling centers have 50 or 60, so I’ve, I don’t know what Stanford, Marissa

Marissa Floro:
I think similar, pretty similar. And they also have a training program. And then, I mean, at Weiland we only have like two and a half clinicians, but that’s separate in addition to, but then I guess if you’re considering like the wellness coaches and all of the, I mean, then I think it begins to kind of expand,

Raechele Pope:
Well, you know, I, this conversation to me feels like a beginning. It doesn’t even feel like it’s over and yet we are out of time. And so instead of just letting it like with these ideas and resources, I want to just see if I’ll give you each a couple of minutes to just say, if you have any final thoughts that we should discuss or that we should pick up. At some other point.

Sharon Mitchell:
I think my final thought is that the mental health of our students is the responsibility of the entire campus. It’s not just the responsibility of counseling services. I think that need to take a public health approach and that everyone should be involved in, you know, showing that we’re a caring community and involved in early intervention. And, you know, Amy had talked about knowing the resources available. So I think that’s what I would end with. Thank you.

Amy Reynolds:
I love that Sharon. I think it’s so important. And so I think what that means is all individuals need to be engaged and invested in supplementing their knowledge base so that they can be active participants. And so there needs to be, like you said, a public health approach, that’s focused on education, not only of students, but of faculty and staff. So to really do that and I, and this is related to the public health approaches. I really think we need to do more on prevention.

Raechele Pope:
Thank you, Marissa. Any final thoughts? Yeah.

Marissa Floro:
I mean, those are good. Those are really good thoughts that you took all the good thoughts. I guess so the one, the one other tinge I would say is like, yeah, I agree that I think it is a community responsibility and every single person has a role students, staff, faculty and that like the mental health of staff and faculty also very much matter to, and very much, or is impacted by students and also impact students’ mental health too. And so just thinking about mental health as like a community wide thing, it’s not just students who have mental health that like all of us do and, and that, that creates a climate. So that would be the last thing I would say to you that it’s not just a silo of some of these concerns, but to think of it a little bit more broadly.

Raechele Pope:
Okay. Thank you. I am so grateful for all of your time today, Sharon, Marissa, and Amy thank you so very much. I’m going to be thinking about this topic for a long time. I also want to thank our sponsors EverFi and Anthology. We really appreciate your support support and are really huge shout out to Natalie Ambrosey the production assistant for the podcast who does all of the behind the scenes work. As you listened today, if you found this content to be useful for your student affairs practice and your scholarship, we’d love it. If you share this episode with your social media networks again, I’m Rochelle pub. And I want to say thank you to doctors, Sharon Mitchell, Marissa Floro, and Amy Reynolds, and to everyone who is watching or listening, let’s keep doing this important work. Thank you. Thank you for inviting us. Thank you.

Websites: 

Alliance for Research on Regional Colleges

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Council for the Study of Community Colleges

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Books

College Students in the United States: Characteristics, Experiences, and Outcomes