Today’s Students Coalition and 20 partner and member organizations submitted comments to the U.S. Department of Education (ED) in response to the Department’s solicitation for best practices to support the mental health of today’s students in higher education. The letter addresses institutional and policy reforms to address the mental health crisis on college campuses nationwide.

Policy recommendations:

• Supporting Students’ Basic Needs
  Addressing mental health challenges requires a holistic approach to ensuring students are supported.
• Add priorities for grants such as the Post-Secondary Success Grants
  to test, refine, evaluate, and scale effective mental health strategies for college students.

Institutional guidance:

• Faculty and Staff Training
  Faculty and staff are often the first line of defense as they are the ones who interact with students regularly.

• Address the stigma
  While the national conversation has come a long way in removing the stigma around getting mental health support, there is more work to be done to remove the stigma and its negative impacts entirely.

• Group Therapy
  Not all individuals need one-on-one therapy. For many, group therapy has proven to be an effective form of treatment.

• Social Connection
  IHEs have started to see the many benefits of providing opportunities such as group therapy, peer support groups, or peer counseling.

• Partner with organizations like The Jed Foundation (JED),
  which provides direct support and resources to college campuses to help them better support their students.

In the letter, the Coalition says the pandemic adversely affected the psychological well-being of college students, leading to an increased prevalence of mental issues, and notes that “the mental health crisis on campus was quickly becoming more extensive than many IHEs had the infrastructure to support.”

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