Depression on College Campuses Conference: Addressing an Evolving Crisis

Sitting in discomfort: supporting the experiences of non-Clinical, student affairs staff managing student well-being concerns

“…By promoting broad mental health literacy as professional development (Spiker & Hammer, 2019;Furnham & Swami, 2018;Lo et al, 2018) and focusing a training curriculum on competencies in helping skills (Eaton, 2016), universities equip staff to align their level of care to differentiate for student needs. Having multiple approaches to care to meet the "one size does not fit all" mantra in mental health care is crucial (Taubman et al, 2021;Cornish et al, 2017). Intentionality in developing training for non-clinical staff is important.…”

“…To meet those ends, universities should equip staff with a toolset that includes: asking questions that elicit meaningful responses (Winger & Olson, 2015), listening empathetically to sit and demonstrate care (Winger & Olson, 2015), referring purposefully with contextual information to a resource office (Stock & Levine, 2017), explaining intentionally how to access a resource and what the process is like (Tye, 2015), and personalizing and humanizing the clinical provider by demonstrating strong relationships with the counseling center to establish a transference of trust (McAllister et al, 2014). By promoting a studentcentered philosophy (Crawford & Johns, 2018) that allows for a tailored and differentiated approach to each student's needs (Taubman et al, 2021), staff can break down barriers to get students to seek support even when they are resistant or will not disclose (McAllister et al, 2014). Kalkbrenner (2020) suggests that faculty intervention in mental health matters may improve if gatekeeper training incorporates motivational interviewing.…”

“…Additionally, more research has been conducted on how culture informs stigma and how different barriers can present across different sociodemographic groups (Horwitz et al, 2020). Lipson et al (2018) conclude that teaching staff how to identify the needs of historically and currently marginalized individuals and successfully bridge to resources in ways appropriate for their identity can bolster the toolbelt of staff and better enable them to differentiate to the needs of their students (Taubman et al, 2021).…”