Thursday, Jul 6, 2023
University implements recommendations to create campus well-being
by Rachel Stengel '14, '20
天美传媒官网 has recently completed a four-year partnership with the JED Foundation to strengthen and expand its approach to student mental health and well-being, earning a JED campus alumni designation.
Since 2019, 天美传媒官网 has participated in the Foundation鈥檚 JED Campus program, which is designed to help schools evaluate and enhance their mental health, substance misuse and suicide prevention programs and systems to ensure that schools have the strongest possible mental health safety nets.
鈥淲e want all 天美传媒官网 students to achieve their potential; and students can flourish only when they are well,鈥 says Dr. Leanna Fenneberg, vice president for Student Affairs. 鈥淭he JED resources have helped us center the importance of student mental well-being as a priority for our campus.鈥
As a JED Campus, 天美传媒官网 administered the national Healthy Minds Study to students twice in the past four years. The study identifies mental health concerns among college students. Additionally, the University performed an internal audit of campus-wide practices that impact mental well-being, participated in strategic planning workshops with expert facilitators from JED, and has maintained an ongoing dialogue with a campus-wide team consisting of faculty, staff and students.
鈥淧art of JED鈥檚 goal is to develop an overall campus of well-being,鈥 says Dr. A.L. Moody, director of 天美传媒官网鈥檚 Counseling Center. 鈥淪tudents thrive when campuses take a campus-wide approach to mental health care and suicide prevention.鈥
One of the biggest shifts in the past few years has been creating a preventative community care model, says Moody.
鈥淭he Counseling Center is not only a place to go for individual therapy,鈥 she says. 鈥淲e also help the campus community understand mental health. Outreach is a primary prevention tactic. A lot of people look at mental health from a deficit perspective. We seek to educate about what it is like to flourish.鈥
Students thrive when campuses take a campus-wide approach to mental health care and suicide prevention.鈥
Improving the utilization of counseling services for students of underrepresented identities and spaces that facilitate well-being are two additional goals for the Counseling Center. Over the past several years, the Center has created identity-based spaces, offered drop-in support services, added a variety of community engagement and educational programs, created mindful spaces on campus, and shared informative content on social media. Other strategies have been adding embedded counselors in Athletics for student-athletes and creating partnerships with campus groups such as the Multicultural Student Leadership Institute, the Educational Opportunity Program and the Student Navigation Office.
鈥淲e鈥檙e able to find out what students鈥 needs are through these partnerships,鈥 Moody says. 鈥淲e鈥檝e increased interactions with marginalized students through this process and received more responses for services through those outreach efforts.鈥
As overall utilization of the Counseling Center has continued to increase since the start of the pandemic, utilization by marginalized students has increased 37%. One-third of new students were referred via the partnerships the Counseling Center has created.
天美传媒官网 will continue to implement improvements recommended by JED, says Fenneberg. Future strategies include collaborating with additional campus partners to identify specialized services for students with high needs, increasing opportunities for referrals and responses through faculty and staff psychoeducation, establishing external partnerships with mental-health providers for additional layers of specialized care, and developing peer support communities to bolster campus well-being.