Advising with Mental Health In Mind

Several weeks ago, I attended a training on "Prevention and Response" with regard to student behavior.  While the training was informative and provided the necessary protocol for handling students who could pose a threat to safety on campus, I left feeling as if there could have been more information on addressing self-reported or suspected mental health issues in students.  Only days later, I came across an article in The Mentor  titled “The Prevalence of Mental Health Issues Among College Students: How Do Advisors Equip Themselves?” in which Lori Corley asserts that advisors have a responsibility in assisting students in accessing mental health treatment and shared some simple tips for doing so.  The training and then subsequently the article could not have intersected at a better time for me as I was grappling with trying to strike a balance in reporting the behavior and also helping the student access services.

According to Lori Corley, “75 percent of lifetime cases of diagnosable mental disorders begin by the age of 24”. 

This data should inform advising by taking into consideration the many responsibilities students are managing and how they are being impacted as a large number of our students are at risk based on age alone.

“Oftentimes varying degrees of stress and anxiety can trigger new mental health concerns or further exasperate existing ones,” states Corley. 

For many of our students, they are facing tremendous pressure and may be juggling more than traditional college students as they oftentimes work, have family responsibilities, or perhaps are the first in their family to attend college and are navigating a system that can seem daunting.    

Taking a moment to inquire about how things are going before moving forward with degreeworks can be an ideal time for advisors to gain insight into the student’s life.  In the event that a student discloses he or she is has mental health concerns during a conversation, advisors need to be prepared to make appropriate referrals, provide accurate and up to date resources, and be equipped to be a positive support for the student.

“Advisors may observe behaviors that could indicate underlying mental health issues or students may self-report their own concerns about their behavior.  In the latter case, it is important to listen to the students’ self-disclosure about concerns they have with their academics or other aspects of their life.  Asking open-ended questions about students’ overall satisfaction may encourage them to disclose feelings they are having or discuss issues they are facing.  And, of course, advisors need to be prepared to deal with behaviors and/or statements that indicate students may be planning to harm themselves” suggests Corley. 

“Academic Advisors should not feel it is their responsibility to counsel students with mental health issues or to recommend treatment.  Instead, advisors can observe students’ behavior and listen to self-disclosures, lend an ear, and refer students to the appropriate services available on campus,” stresses Corley.  

Encouraging a student to seek help and providing them with the assurance that they are not alone does not mean taking on the role of a mental health professional.  Rather, it is a necessary component of advising as we are able to have a significant effect on their future which is just as important as campus safety.

Food Matters

Food is a connecting point between sustainability (since food production is inextricably earth-based and ecological) and nutrition (since human physiology is inextricably bound to food inputs).

Ecological Sustainability

• Food Matters Summary: production, consumption, and food type impacts resource use, environmental health, and carbon footprint.
• Institutional Commitments: Auraria Sustainable Campus Program, LEED Certification of the Confluence building.
• Student Commitments: Composting Club, Community Garden.
• Individual Choices: how we consume is a reflection of our values (how we relate our individual life to everyone/everything else).
• CCD Choices: ecological sustainability often correlates with financial sustainability within our offices.
• Student Advising: one’s environment affects one’s health, energy levels, and life opportunity (World Health Organization: approximately one-quarter of the global disease burden, and more than one-third of the burden among children, is due to modifiable environmental factors).
• Student Advising: careers in sustainability, resource management, renewable energies, research (NREL). 
• How can we – in our various roles as higher education professionals – incorporate sustainability into our student learning outcomes?

Human Nutrition

• Food Matters Summary: less processed food, more fruits and vegetables, complex grains, and proportional lean protein leads to better health.
• Institutional Commitments: CCD Health and Wellness Committee, Be Well Auraria.
• Student Commitments: advocacy for more healthy food options on campus, family nutrition.
• Individual Choices: good nutrition improves your physical and psychological quality of life. 
• CCD Choices: good nutrition leads to more energy and less sick days.
• Student Advising: nutrition (and healthy lifestyle choices overall) impacts cognitive functioning. 
• Student Advising: careers in nutrition, healthcare, public health, exercise science, research (NIH). 
• How can we build the capacity of our students to utilize healthy living as an academic success strategy?

Social Justice

• Sustainability and nutrition tend to track along socioeconomic lines. For one, there tends to be an increased cost to sustainable or nutritious purchases. Additionally, differences in political advocacy and educational opportunity –which tend to track along socioeconomic lines – variously impact access to and awareness of sustainability and nutrition. Moreover, on the flip side of the same coin, the burdens of unsustainability and poor nutrition disproportionately fall along socioeconomic lines, whether we are talking about cardiovascular disease, Type II Diabetes, or the location of landfills. And so, for me, it is contingent upon us, as advocates for equity and opportunity in our society, to not only include sustainability and nutrition in our own lives and our own offices, but to be able to take these issues into account as we advise our students about careers, about resources, and about their own self-advocacy on campus and in society.   
• What role does education play in creating a more healthy and ecologically sustainable future for our community?  In particular, how does the mission and vision of the community college relate, if at all, to socioeconomic disparities within nutrition and sustainability?

* As part of a college-wide conversation, CCD faculty and staff are encouraged to read Food Matters, by Mark Bittman.

CCD Conference on Poverty - Summary

Last Friday, I attended the Conference on Poverty facilitated by Dr. Donna Beegle. It was very good, and appropriate to the work that we do at Community College of Denver. Here are my three main takeaways.

1. The American ideal – implicitly if not explicitly – asserts that poverty is the result of personal failings (lack of work ethic, addictions, immorality). However, the greater contributor to poverty, in particular generational poverty (cyclical), is inequality in social systems (education, criminal justice) and inequality in networks (mentors, stable support systems).

2. Universally for humans, geography (our environment and stimuli) shapes perspective (what we see), and perspective shapes how we process experience (how we interpret and respond). Confirmation bias (seeing what we want to see in order to support our view of the world) often leads to faulty attribution of motives and behaviors (making judgment based on what we see, not the objective situation of the other).

3. Categorically speaking, there are different types of poverty (different geographies), which tend to shape and shift perspective differently, thereby producing different interpretations and responses. For example, an immigrant living in poverty may very well be hopeful because they see temporary hardship as a ticket to a better life in a new country. You could apply a similar model to a poor graduate student. Alternatively, a person coming from generational poverty, in which a family has been living in poverty for many years, may not be anywhere near as hopeful as their lived experience has demonstrated few ways out. 

Further Research

- Beegle, Donna, See Poverty, Be the Difference (2007).

- Beegle, Donna, An Action Approach to Educating Students Who Live in the Crisis of Poverty (2012).

- Gans, H. The War Against the Poor (1995).

- Invisible Nation, PBS Documentary, in production

- http://www.combarriers.com/Home