College students are facing a mental health crisis — let’s talk about how we can help.
When the coronavirus pandemic began last spring, many Americans’ daily lives were upended nearly overnight. One population that was hit hard by these abrupt changes were college students. College campuses quickly closed, students lost access to resources like food and housing, many lost their jobs, and some took on extra work to support their families. Others dealt directly with the stress of the public health crisis as family or friends caught COVID-19. All of these stressors, on top of academic pressures, have added to another crisis: student mental health. Recent research from the Hope Center for College, Community, and Justice found that more than one third of students reported experiencing moderate to severe anxiety or depression through the fall of 2020, compared to 32 percent in 2019. In another survey, Active Minds found that 75 percent of respondents reported that their mental health had worsened since the beginning of the pandemic, with many citing stress, anxiety, sadness, and depression.
While the pandemic brought about additional stress and exacerbated existing mental health challenges, college students’ struggles — and difficulty accessing mental health supports — are not new. One in five undergraduate students experience a mental health condition.
Between 2009 and 2015, counseling center utilization increased by an average of 30–40 percent, while college enrollment only increased by only five percent.
Despite rising demand, access to mental health services for college students has always been a struggle. In 2016, the American Psychological Association found that 61 percent of students diagnosed with mental illness didn’t receive treatment. One third of all colleges have students on waiting lists for appointments, with an average wait time of three weeks, which is far too long for students in distress. And persistent racial disparities in knowledge of and access to campus mental health resources means that already vulnerable students are the ones that find it the most difficult to seek and access treatment. To make matters worse, 60 percent of students reported that the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic made accessing mental health care even more difficult.
Student mental health also has important links to student success and retention in college. Research has shown that students with mental health issues are more than twice as likely to drop out without completing a degree, even when controlling for prior academic success and other student characteristics. In fact, a quarter of students who drop out of school with a GPA below a 3.0 have been diagnosed with at least one mental illness. Ensuring that those students receive treatment could help prevent these dropouts, which are enormously costly for students and institutions alike. Expanding treatment access for just 500 students on a college campus could earn an estimated $1 million in additional tuition revenue for the institution by averting student dropouts.
Congress has recognized the need to deal with the pressing mental health needs of college students with various approaches at the federal level. In 2004, Congress passed the Garrett Lee Smith Memorial Suicide Prevention Act which established a competitive grant program with funding for suicide prevention activities to states, tribal groups, and college campuses. This program was reauthorized in 2016 in the 21st Century Cures Act and remains the primary mechanism through which the federal government provides funding to colleges and universities to expand the capacity of mental health services. The Student Mental Health Rights Act, which was introduced in 2019, would take a different approach, directing the Department of Education (ED) to study mental health policies on college campuses and to issue guidance on how colleges could better comply with federal laws related to mental health. And finally, the recently introduced TREAT Act would temporarily authorize mental health providers to provide in-person and telehealth services across state lines during and immediately after the COVID-19 pandemic emergency. This would be particularly impactful for students who currently attend school remotely, as a mixture of licensure requirements makes it difficult for on campus providers to provide services out-of-state. A mixture of both funding and administrative approaches would help to advance reforms that would expand mental health service and reduce mental health related dropouts.
First, it is imperative to increase appropriations to the Garrett Lee Smith grant program to reflect the increasing demand for mental health services on campus. These grant funds cover a host of programs and activities, including gatekeeper training (an educational program which teaches the warning signs of sucide risk and how to help individuals seek treatment), screening activities, infrastructure for improved linkages to services, crisis hotlines, and community partnerships. These are proven and effective strategies that helped to prevent 79,000 youth suicide attempts between 2007–2010 alone. Increasing appropriations to this already successful program is the best lifeline we can give to today’s students and to institutions that are overwhelmed with the demand for services.
In addition, ED should study and produce guidance on campus mental health policies. Higher Learning Advocates and 13 other organizations recently sent a letter urging the Department to issue guidance clarifying that emergency COVID-19 funding to institutions can be used for student mental health services, and ED issued this important clarification in their latest guidance update. Other forms of clarifying guidance could include guidance to institutions on how to respond to students who are at risk of harming themselves and guidance of how institutions can reform their policies to provide accommodations for those facing mental illness.
So many students are facing heightened levels of mental health conditions due to the coronavirus pandemic and associated challenges. We must support students who have been exposed to high levels of stress and trauma with better mental health support. Investing in the mental health of college students is ultimately an investment in the continued success of our higher learning system. With some smart reforms, we can make sure that some of our most vulnerable students will be able to access the help that they need.
