Considering Mental Health in Higher Education Teaching
In addition to my PhD work, I am also completing a graduate certification in college and university teaching (GCCUT). Due to both my passion in teaching and learning, as well as my interest in mental in higher education, I conducted an independent study (as part of the GCCUT program) in which I compiled a list of strategies higher education instructors can employ to better accommodate students coping with mental health in the class room.
Mental Health Crisis
How to better accommodate students with mental illness in the classroom as an instructor:
Reduce the stress load
Build student rapport
Fight stigma and shame
Recognize warning signs
If you have any insight into ways to accommodate student mental health as an instructor, please feel free to share.
Mental Health Crisis
- Mental illness is becoming increasingly prevalent in students in higher education
- It can be difficult to recognize, and students don’t always seek help due to stigma and shame
- Across the U.S., ~46% of college students struggle with some form of mental illness (Mental Health First Aid, 2016)
- Millennials and Gen Z experience far greater rates of mental illness than previous generations (Kitzrow, 2003)
- Possible causes of the rise of social media and a change in student demographics (Flatt, 2003), as well as climate change (Clayton, Manning, and Hodge, 2014)
- College is a very stressful time for academic and non-academic reasons, and most people experience their first mental health problems before the age of 24
How to better accommodate students with mental illness in the classroom as an instructor:
Reduce the stress load
- Relax deadlines, offer ‘late passes’
- Less stressful or no exams
- More group work, less home work
- Options to make up missed assignments
- Extra credit opportunities
Build student rapport
- Show students you care
- Build student-teacher relationships
- Allow students autonomy in the classroom
- Solicit anonymous feedback
Fight stigma and shame
- Address mental health in the classroom
- Share personal experiences
- Normalize mental illness
- Offer support
Recognize warning signs
- Receive training, such as Mental Health First Aid
- Reach out to struggling students
- Try to support and encourage students to seek help
If you have any insight into ways to accommodate student mental health as an instructor, please feel free to share.
Additional Teaching Resources
There are a number of things teachers and instructors can do in the class room to help students struggling with mental illness. Here are a few resources that might be helpful – most are originally designed for K-12 (where most of the current efforts to deal with student mental illness originate) and will need to be adapted to college and university teaching:
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Sources
There are lots of different teaching strategies out there, and this list by no means does justice to their hard work. If you know of an important teaching technique missing from this list, please let me know about it under the Contact tab.
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