“It’s not just about counseling”— a public health professional’s reflection on supporting the mental health of students during COVID-19

The COVID-19 pandemic resulted in drastic changes in people’s lives in various ways, and not always in the ways we might think or believe. For residents of the Washington Heights in the northwest part of New York City, it meant that school and daycare center closures, coupled with the fact that essential and/or frontline workers had to still venture outside for work, would bring on numerous psychological and emotional burdens in addition to the stresses they already face on a daily basis.

Now on top of everything else, individuals had to worry about maybe bringing home and exposing to their families a potentially life-threatening disease, whose symptoms and aftereffects could become chronic and lifelong problems. Or, on the other hand, due to quarantining mandates, people were suddenly trapped in tiny NYC apartments, either entirely alone or — perhaps just as worse — among relatives. Regardless of how much an individual may love his/her family, everyone at some point or another needs their own space and privacy and the ability to escape from out under one’s roof to see friends or travel places for periods of time. It’s just a human trait. But with social isolation measures in place, another perfectly normal, taken-for-granted part of our everyday lives, was snatched away.

Anticipating the Washington Heights community’s mental health and psychosocial (MHPS) needs, epidemiologist Dr. Sabrina Hermosilla, PhD, a research investigator with extensive global mental experience at the University of Michigan’s Center of Social Epidemiology and Population Health, alongside Sarah Dugan, formulated the “We’re Here” COVID-19 support program this past summer. Sarah Dugan, MPH, is a current epidemiology DrPH student at Columbia University Mailman School of Public Health. She is also the Program Coordinator for the Global Health certificate. And this summer, she came on as the Program Director of “We’re Here”.

“We’re Here” is a program created in response to the COVID-19 pandemic and the MHPS challenges that would inevitably arise in tandem. The program is based around providing free, confidential, (and more importantly for the times, virtual) mental health support and assistance. Master’s and doctoral-level students in programs of public health, psychology, and social work were recruited from universities in NYC to volunteer as outreach workers over the summer. They received training on counseling methods and facilitating one-on-one and group sessions to students and their families in Washington Heights in order to help them and refer them to services if necessary in their time of need. The program was eventually able to support more than 300 people with these services, youth and their families alike. The primary aim was to be able to give people a safe space and opportunity to vent and seek support in privacy away from other family members.

Below, Sarah shares some of her own personal insights and experience regarding the program.

Why did you choose the Washington Heights community specifically?

We chose this population because it is a population that does have high rates of poverty. About 19% of the residents in Washington Heights live in poverty, and 92% of the students in that area qualify for free- and reduced-price lunch. So we knew that that would be an area that would be hit really hard by the pandemic. And in terms of the jobs, there are also a lot of people who perform frontline work, and there would be the added stress of bringing COVID home and worrying about where their kids are going to go now that they’re not in school, and daycare, etc., and how the kids are going to fare when they’re on the computer doing homework, do they even have the access that they need. So we chose this because we knew there would be a high impact of depression and anxiety and other mental stress.

What do you think were the most valuable components of the program?

I think the training itself was really important. Our student outreach workers underwent a week-long intensive training and within the training we also made sure to include an adverse event reporting. We realized as these sessions were going on, inevitably there may be some difficult topics that came about, and potentially reports of abuse or suicidality, and we wanted to be sure the outreach workers were prepared to handle such cases. We brought an expert to train our workers and recognizing signs of distress and emergency and what to do in the instance something like that did occur.

Another component that was incredibly important was our community partner, Community League of the Heights (CLOTH). It’s a nonprofit dedicated to supporting and empowering economically disadvantaged residents in Washington Heights. And CLOTH actually has a partner school called Community Health Academy of the Heights (CHAH) and they were kind enough to allow us to recruit their students and we also recruited other individuals and families through their wider social networks as well.

How would you advise public health students and professionals who perhaps are not necessarily trained in childhood and adolescent development on ways of getting involved in such efforts?

I think that’s a great question. As public health students and professionals, we have a great understanding of the large picture, and we can see the greater picture and we know a lot about mental health on a population-scale. I think what a lot of public health students can do during their training is get this one-on-one experience, which is working one-on-one with a youth, or adolescent, or child, whatever population you are studying.

“Having this one-on-one experience is so powerful, it will influence your work, it will give you joy, it will give you motivation, it will help you feel really empowered.”

I would encourage all public health students to volunteer as mentors. So if there’s an opportunity, even within the community they’re in now, they could tutor students. I would even consider, you don’t necessarily have to be out there doing “mental health work” but if you’re there tutoring a student in any subject, you’re contributing to the benefit of their mental health, and therefore contributing to your own learning and understanding about the population you want to work in.

CLOTH is currently in the process of waiting back from a grant they submitted early this fall to receive funds for “WE’RE HERE” so that the program can continue and even extend to after the pandemic and beyond borders as well to support even more disadvantaged and vulnerable people outside of Washington Heights, around the United States and hopefully in other parts of the world.