The COVID-19 pandemic continues to have a global and multifaceted impact on public health. Marginalized and vulnerable populations, such as college students and postdoctoral fellows with disabilities or pre-existing conditions, are being disproportionately affected by the COVID-19 pandemic. Various barriers contribute to an individual’s intentions to seek mental health help, but with COVID-19’s unprecedented permeability, more research is needed to support this student population. This phenomenological study explored the coping strategies and help-seeking behaviors of college students and postdoctoral fellows with disabilities during the COVID-19 pandemic. Using semi-structured, in-depth interviews from fall 2020 (n = 36) and spring 2021 (n = 28), a thematic analysis was conducted. The Transactional Model of Stress and Coping was used to triangulate findings, to better understand the relationship between perceived stressors, coping mechanisms, and psychological outcomes. The findings show that (1) college students with disabilities coped in multiple ways (i.e., behavioral, relational, and mental), with some noting improvements in their coping abilities by spring, and (2) stigma prevented college students with disabilities from seeking help when needed. These findings emphasize the need for higher education to address ableism and use factors beneficial to fostering resiliency (i.e., social support, optimism, and self-advocacy) among college students with disabilities.

The purpose of the study is to understand how undergraduate, graduate, and professional students were affected by the events of racial injustice and the COVID-19 pandemic. Data gathered from an online campus-wide survey administered during July and August 2020 indicated high levels of stress and rates of depression across all stages of training. A majority of these students also indicated that, while events around racism negatively impacted their mental health, such events did not affect student academic success as COVID-19 did. Although previous studies have demonstrated that student mental health has been negatively affected during COVID-19, this study shows that student mental health is also impacted by events driven by racism and racial injustice concurrent to the pandemic. In light of these findings, it is recommended that institutions adopt an intersectional approach toward addressing such contemporaneous stressors with initiatives that can adapt to multiple events simultaneously.