Teaching and the Mental Health Crisis

 Caveat: I am not an expert on this issue in terms of credentialing. I am an "experiential," on-the-ground semi-expert on the subject of dealing with college students with mental health problems as a faculty member and lower-level administrator. 

Second caveat: I have no quantitative data that I have generated myself. There is plenty of that available if you look for it, and you will not have to look very long.  I read (parts of) Jean Twenge's book IGEN, and now Jonathan Haidt has a book out on the same subject (which I am tempted to think he borrowed from Twenge's work; I heard him cite her on a podcast). So the stats about 60% of young women being depressed and how much the female suicide rate has gone up are well reported. 

Third caveat: I cannot, obviously, give details or examples from my experience, so any I do allude to will be vague. 

Beyond the caveats: I am a department chair in the liberal arts unit of my college. My department has the distinction of including eight discipline areas (it used to have a ninth). We also teach a couple of courses in the core, so we "see everyone." Additionally, its major focus is a course that automatically induces anxiety: public speaking. 

In the last ten days I have had three questions/situations from faculty about mental health or severe personal problems. One is a chemically-based mental health disorder, one was probably trauma-based, and one was about sudden poverty (a termsI just made up to mean that a student living close to the line had something happen to them that pushed them way past the line into, well, indigence). Fortunately, in all three, I knew the resources to recommend to the faculty, or at least the direction to point them in. In one case I filled out a "concern" report (not what we call it, but the term will do) with the institution. In all three my own emotional resources were taxed by the incidents. 

I am proud of my institution for its awareness of student needs and their attempts to address them. We have pursued resources and they are being used. That is not the point of this post.  

The point is that none of the faculty, with perhaps a few exceptions, were trained or ever even expected to deal with the kinds of mental health problems we are seeing. 

And it's overwhelming. And I don't see anyone acknowledging it--"it" being that on top of teaching academically underprepared or unprepared students, we may, or will, have to deal with disorders, depressions, and suicide. 

I know my colleagues are stressed about this, although they may not realize the cause of it. This year in our university system we had to address in our annual portfolio how we show a commitment to student success. How many of us received an email from a student who wrote, "I am going through .... (depression, anxiety, panic attacks,  suicide attempt, recovery from eating disorder, family trauma, institutionalization) right now and need a .... (personal day, extension on the assignment, incomplete grade, alternative assignment because the readings trigger my traumatic memories)"?  

Seriously, who isn't showing a commitment to student success when we write an empathetic email back to the student, give them an extension, notify the counseling center (or authorities), or sit with the students in the office and listen to them cry through their pain?

But there is another layer. I acknowledge the mental health of the students. But why is the potential effect of this student mental health crisis on faculty themselves not acknowledged? Why are we expected to deal with these matters without an acknowledgement of its impact on us, or that we might be going through worse?

This question started, for me, during COVID, when the big topic of discussion was "trauma-informed pedagogy." No one talked about the trauma faculty were going through, only that of the students. That discrepancy was a mystery to me. Everyone was susceptible to illness or worse from COVID. All of us lost friends and family members (let's not forget 1.2 million people died, folks; if I hear one more person try to find the silver lining in COVID, I will scream).  Two of my faculty were let go due to COVID budget cuts. 

This is a reasonable call for us all to recognize that college teaching at any level, but most definitely at the access level, has become intensely more stressful and that some of us may be unknowingly affected physically and otherwise from dealing with the increased mental and emotional problems of our students. 

And that it is time to do something about it. Some of us may need to set up boundaries and decide an early promotion or teaching overloads or doing more work than our contracts call for--that none of that is worth the toll. Some of us should start talking to the administrators about talking about this problem--getting it out in the open. Some of us need training (I would say many of us) on how not to carry the burdens of our students, because they are not our burdens.**

And maybe we should see that what is causing the students problems  doing the same to us: the excessive online-ness of our existence, the acceptance of social isolation and fragmentation exacerbated by the pandemic, the need to be outside, to use our hands, to move, to engage; and I would add, to find a more solid basis to our lives. 

*Whoever decided that the word "trigger" was appropriate for a stimulus that could cause immediate pain and panic?

**This is where I become cynical. While we have to hear our students' concerns in good faith, there are times when, well, grandma has died for the third time this semester. Some students have learned that lying about problems and trauma and depression and whatever just plain works. Some don't want a solution; the problem has been in their lives so long it is more comfortable to live with it. Some have a new problem every day because that just how it works for them. 

A trained counselor would not and could not take their burdens on herself. It would be too much. Professors cannot either.