As we see our students
on a regular basis, we often can tell if they are struggling emotionally. Yet
we’re not mental-health professionals. Most of us don’t have the training to
know how to offer support and guidance to students who are suffering with
mental-health issues. So how should we help?
Anxiety, in
particular, seems to be on the rise among
the students. I recommend a three-step response.
Step No. 1: Notice. Only a few students who have killed themselves had any interaction with their
institution’s counseling service.
I suggest we don’t
have to diagnose a mental illness; we just have to recognize that someone is in
distress. That’s not as difficult as it might seem. Distress might manifest
itself as a downturn in a student’s hygiene. A student suddenly might start
missing class, or failing to turn in assignments. Or someone who is normally
alert and engaged might now be falling sleeping in class.
Those signs don’t
require a lot of training to spot — they just require us to be paying
attention. If we feel that something is going on with a student, we’re probably
right. We’re going to notice distress. We often have an intuitive sense of
that.
Step No. 2: Ask. So once we’ve noticed their distress,
what do we do next ? Ask them about it.
That doesn’t require
much more than talking with a student after class. We can say something like,
"Hey, you seem a little off these days. Is everything OK?" We can
send an email. We can ask a student to come for an informal talk. The idea is
to show concern and give the student a chance to talk about the problem. Maybe
it’s the usual stuff — academic stress, interpersonal drama, not enough sleep.
But maybe it’s not. Many of us have a natural inclination to explain away
irregularities. We have to push past that inclination and reach out to
students. They may feel uncomfortable opening up to us. That’s their right. But
we have to give them the chance.
But isn’t it risky to
get so personal with our students? Won’t students feel as if we’re overstepping
our bounds?
While acknowledging
that instructors need to stay within the limits of their faculty role — we
should not, for example, invite a struggling student to come stay at our house.
In short: show the
students we care, and inquire when we notice potential distress.
Step No. 3: Refer. Keep
a piece of paper in the office with the phone numbers of relevant mental-health,
and student-service help centers/specialists. We should be ready to point
students in the right direction. If necessary, we can even call the counseling
service, and hand the phone to the student. Or we can walk the student there. A
little preparation — just knowing what resources are exist and how to seek them
— can go a long way toward being able to help if such a situation arises.
We should include
information about campus mental-health resource, along with a brief paragraph
telling students about the people working on the campus to help take care of
them. We should tell the students on the first day of class.
All instructors can do
this basic step — acknowledging in advance that students might need help, and
letting them know where to get it — even when students don’t show signs of
distress. Let them know we understand that college is stressful sometimes, that
there are resources available, that they are not alone.
None of these steps
require a lot of time or planning. We don’t need to be experts in mental health
to be able to look out for our students. We just need to care about your
students, and invest a little time in our preparation, and do something if we
notice that something is off. As the human face of our institution, we are in
the best position to connect students to the help they need.
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