‎3 Tips to Improve Student Mental Health‎

Student mental health is in crisis, declares the American Psychological Association. The numbers are staggering. According to a study published in the Journal of Affective Disorders, over 60 percent of college students struggled with, at minimum, one mental health disorder.

In 2021, a survey found that more than half of college students struggled with mental health. In 2022, a survey found about half of high school students struggling with hopelessness and depression.

The link between mental health and academic performance is straightforward. According to a study published in JAMA Network Open, researchers found that procrastination is often correlated with poor mental health, to identify just one example.

Although the COVID-19 pandemic exacerbated the mental health crisis, we have not seen any improvement in students' mental health as the pandemic abates. This is because the pandemic didn’t cause the mental health crisis per se, but rather, worsened it.

In the meantime, what can students do to improve their mental health?

1. Have high standards: In Reaching Higher: The Power of Expectations in Schooling, Rhona Weinstein demonstrated that students do well when they are held to high standards. Lowering expectations for students, however well-intentioned it might be, may have counterproductive effects on students' performance and mental health. When students are expected to adhere to high standards, they often achieve excellence because students have the agency to do well, sometimes in spite of their harsh circumstances.
2. Write weekly—or daily: Writing, as many students and teachers can ascertain from experience, keeps the mind engaged, focused, and productive. As the English author E. M. Forster once said, “How do I know what I think until I see what I say?” We write to find out what we think and to stay engaged, focused, and determined. Writing, and syllogistic reasoning in particular, is a good training for the mind. Especially in college, most achievement is determined through writing assignments. Therefore, developing an adept facility with writing is a good exercise for the mind.
3. Just show up: When students experience mental health challenges, they have a tendency to skip classes and disappear from their social circles, but that isolation may cause loneliness, which then exacerbates their conditions. As the American filmmaker Woody Allen once put it, “90 percent of success in life is just showing up.” According to a study published in Journal of the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning, researchers find that students who show up achieve outstanding academic performance, compared to those who skip classes.

The Promise of Counseling

I have studied at three higher education institutions—the University of Miami, the University of Pennsylvania, and the University of Minnesota. In all of these three institutions, I have noted the high demand among the student population for better mental health services. The wait to get assigned to the right counselor is sometimes incredibly long, taking weeks, if not months.

When I first arrived at the University of Miami, I had a problem with public speaking. In Yemen, where I grew up, public speaking was not encouraged and was even discouraged. I naturally became an anxious speaker, and I could not present my thoughts in front of my classmates. When I worked with a counselor on my public speaking anxiety, I noted great improvement in my ability to speak and relate to people. By doing cognitive behavioral therapy and exposure practices, I conquered the fear of public speaking.

Counseling can play a significant role in the personal and professional development of students. It enables them to have the agency to act in the world and to navigate all sorts of structural barriers that often bar students from realizing their self-actualization. It assisted me to become a student who can speak out without freaking out.

Conclusion

College students have the agency to embody the change they want to see in the world. However, human accomplishment is seldom individual. The last sentence is so crucial that it is worth repeating: human accomplishment is seldom individual. There are always people, however hidden from the public eye they might be, who were involved in individual success. “It takes a village to raise a child” is a proverb we use to express that same idea.

But some students come to college without strong social support. First-generation students are one example; zero-generation students are another. Although we as students need systemic support to overhaul the mental health crisis, there is much we have at our disposal to become the scholars we aspire to be.