Healthy Minds

  • By Shannon O'Connor
  • 04/01/18

In this issue of College Planning & Management you will find the results of our annual campus housing survey. In the survey, we asked not only about the residential facilities that exist or are being planned or built at colleges and universities across the country, but also for respondents’ thoughts and concerns about the students who occupy these facilities and attend classes at their schools.

A growing concern for the past several years has been student mental and emotional health. In response to the question, “What is the one issue that concerns you most right now, and why?” among the usual answers concerning costs, funding, deferred maintenance, and keeping beds filled, more and more often the answer is “student emotional fragility,” “student wellness,” “mental health issues,” “emotional/mental health/illness,” and “the greater mental health issues.”

According to the American Psychological Association’s webpage for Campus Mental Health, in a 2014 National Survey of college counseling centers, respondents reported that 52 percent of their clients had severe psychological problems, an increase from 44 percent in 2013. A majority of respondents noted increases over the past five years of anxiety disorders, crises requiring immediate response, psychiatric medication issues, and clinical depression. In a 2016 survey of students by the American College Health Association, 52.7 percent of students surveyed reported feeling that things were hopeless and 39.1 percent reported feeling so depressed that it was difficult to function during the past 12 months.

There is no single, simple answer to addressing student mental and behavioral health needs. There can be no argument that these needs must be met. Mental illness impacts not only those who suffer with it, but can also effect other students, roommates, instructors, coaches, and more. Without intervention, students experiencing a mental health issue are more likely to self-harm, receive lower GPAs, drop out of school, or be unemployed than their peers who do not have a mental health challenge.

Resources are available from the National Alliance on Mental Illness, the American Psychological Association, the American College Health Association, and JED, among others, for starting points in developing methods to managing student mental and emotional illness.

As part of the mission to design, furnish, and maintain healthy campuses, the health of the students themselves must not be overlooked.

This article originally appeared in the College Planning & Management April 2018 issue of Spaces4Learning.

Featured

  • How One School Reimagined Learning Spaces—and What Others Can Learn

    When Collegedale Academy, a PreK–8 school outside Chattanooga, Tenn., needed a new elementary building, we faced the choice that many school leaders eventually confront: repair an aging facility or reimagine what learning spaces could be. Our historic elementary school held decades of memories for families, including some who had once walked its halls as children themselves. But years of wear and the need for costly repairs made it clear that investing in the old building would only patch the problems rather than solve them.

  • KI Launches K–12 Classroom Furniture Giveaway

    Contract furniture company KI recently announced the launch of its fourth-annual Classroom Furniture Giveaway, which awards $50,000 each to four K–12 educators across the U.S., according to a news release. The goal is to address decreasing student engagement and increasing teacher burnout numbers by updating learning spaces to accommodate modern needs.

  • Tennessee State University Gains Approval for New Engineering Facility

    Tennessee State University in Nashville, Tenn., recently announced that it has received approval from the Tennessee State Building Commission to build a new engineering building on campus, according to a university news release. The 70,000-square-foot, $50-million facility will play home to the university’s engineering programs and the Applied & Industrial Technology program.

  • Colorado State University Global, SCTE Launch Online Certificate Program

    Colorado State University Global (CSU Global), based in Denver, Colo., recently announced a partnership with CableLabs subsidiary the Society of Cable Telecommunications Engineers (SCTE) to launch an online certificate training program for broadband professionals, according to a news release.