Mental Health Awareness & Resources
Even under normal conditions, student stress levels tend to rise at this time of the semester. Fall 2024 has been unusual, with multiple hurricanes and a tense election, and colleagues have reported hearing from students who are struggling to manage their coursework or their mental health. Although rates of depression are trending down after a pandemic high, the National Institute of Mental Health reports that young adults (ages 18-25) suffer from higher rates of mental illness than other adults. U.S. Surgeon General Vivek Murthy has been spreading awareness about an epidemic of loneliness on college campuses and emphasizing the importance of connection and belonging to students’ well-being.
For faculty and TAs, it’s important to know that stress and anxiety can hamper college students’ ability to learn. When they feel threatened or fearful, their cognitive abilities are curtailed; they’re far less likely to be curious or reflective, and they don’t have the bandwidth necessary for higher-order thinking. But of course, their health is even more important than their learning. Most faculty and TAs are not trained counselors, so we shouldn’t try to serve in that role. We can express care and concern, encourage students to seek help when they need it, and share resources available at FSU. We can help to destigmatize seeking support. We can also attend to our course designs and classroom climates, so that we foster connection and reduce stress—for students and for us. Here are some suggestions:
- Talk about mental health. Students can benefit from hearing that they are not alone in struggling. We can communicate that it is normal to face mental health challenges, especially during stressful times. There are actions that students can take to care for themselves, and we can encourage them to make plans to tend to their mental health.
- Share resources. You can link to resources like the University Counseling Center, Case Management Services, the Center for Health Advocacy and Wellness, FSU’s Student Resilience Project, SAMHSA’s coping tips for traumatic events and disasters, etc., on Canvas and in your syllabus. If you talk about the resources in class and remind students about them periodically, you can help normalize making use of support. It’s important to note that these resources are available for graduate students as well as undergraduates.
- Express care. Even those of us who are less comfortable addressing the social-emotional dimensions of teaching can find ways to express that we care about students’ safety and well-being as well as their learning and success. If you notice a student is struggling or distressed, you can ask them how they are doing and respond with encouragement and resources. Connecting with a professor can be very meaningful for students.
- Foster connection and community. Helping students interact and feel comfortable with each other goes a long way. Although they’re surrounded by other people their age, students often feel isolated in their classes. First-year students in particular may experience the university only in high enrollment courses, where they never speak. Chamblis and Takacs insist that a sense of social connectedness is a prerequisite for learning. Asking students to complete some tasks in groups or pairs will habituate them to collaborating, and actively working together and will also maneuver them into making connections with each other. You can help them get past their reticence by assigning groups for them. It helps to give students a chance to bond (and perhaps share contact information) before they begin collaborating, so introducing themselves should be the first task any time they work together.
- Make courses as hospitable as possible. We can do our best to ensure that workloads are manageable, including by building in a few “catch-up” opportunities (for students and for us). We can make our course policies flexible, acknowledging that students may need to be absent for reasons beyond their control. We can avoid adding to students’ anxiety by making our instructions and expectations as clear and concrete as possible. If a course includes mostly high-stakes exams, we can consider shifting to more frequent lower-stakes assignments or quizzes.
Making our courses more hospitable for students can also make the experience of teaching more manageable and enjoyable for us. Faculty also need and deserve support. The Employee Assistance Program offers counseling, referrals, and resources. As always, CAT offers support for teaching, so if you would like to discuss a matter related to teaching, please reach out to us at pro-teaching@fsu.edu. We are grateful for all you do, and we look forward to working with you.
UPCOMING EVENTS
Provost’s Showcase of Scholarly Teaching
Friday, April 4th | 1:00 – 5:00 p.m. | Location TBA | More details on our website
We’re delighted to announce that CAT and FSU Libraries will host the second annual Provost’s Showcase of Scholarly Teaching on April 4th, 2025. This event is an opportunity for you to share your teaching expertise and innovations with the larger campus community. Even if you’ve never thought about presenting at a pedagogical conference before, you likely have strategies and insights that could be of benefit to colleagues. We invite you to apply to host a roundtable discussion or present a poster.
If you would like to submit a proposal, please fill out our Application Form. The application due date is January 31, 2025. We look forward to working with you!