An Integrated Approach to Student Mental Health

June 2, 2021
8 min read

On why Resolvve simplifies the student life by providing you all the support you need, in one place.

Written by Noah Tile
Illustration by Mayara Lista

After seeing how difficult it is for students to support that takes into account mental health, academics, and personal growth, Resolvve has decided to fill the void.

Meet Jamie, an 18-year-old first student at Western University, in London. Jamie just finished her first semester of school.

Things have been difficult for her.

Jamie struggles to get out of bed in the morning, feeling low-energy and unmotivated. She is anxious about not making enough friends. She dreads going to class, afraid of speaking up or asking a question in tutorial. “What if everyone else already knows the material? What if they mock me for asking stupid questions? What if my voice sounds stupid?” 

Since her day lacks structure she loses herself in the chaos, despite her attempts to organize and manage her time. She can barely focus now, constantly distracting as she scrolls through Facebook and Twitter. Jamie forgets assignments and deadlines, birthdays and anniversaries, parties and hangouts. Her personal, social and academic lives are all falling apart. She has struggles regulating emotion, some days she almost breaks into tears. Overall, putting one foot in front of the other is a challenge. 

On top of all of this, she is expected to choose a major, which will decide the course of her next four years, placing the seeds of her career trajectory in the long run. She has no idea what she wants to do with her life.

How would you go about solving this problem?

Her Professor tells the students who struggle that they should:

“Go to the academic success department and work with an academic coach or learning strategist. They can help you build the tools and skills to deal with school stress, to learn to focus, to become organized and adept at managing your time.”

Her residence advisor or don might chime in and say:

“You should really talk to someone. Go to health and wellness. They have counselors and therapists there who can be a listening ear and help you build the tools and skills to deal with the psychological and emotional concerns you are struggling with.”

And lastly, someone at the registrar will tell her:

“The career counselling center is an incredible resource. They will help you discover your strengths and find a meaningful career path, one that you value and care about.”

Three separate departments. Three separate appointments she needs to go out and book. Three separate people relay her problems too, divvying them up. One issue splintering into separate pieces., As if each piece is not part of a greater whole.

It does not need to be this way.

Students need one department. One support person. No fragmentation. A puzzle with all of its pieces.

Resolvve solves this problem by providing access to world-class psychotherapists. These mental health professionals are specialized to help students. To support their mental health, academic success and personal growth. Each provider is a therapist, academic coach, and career counselor, all in one. They are uniquely qualified to address the specific needs a student may present with. Resolvve believes an integrated approach is the best way to  improve student well-being.

The Issues Are Too Difficult to Separate

What came first, the chicken or the egg?

Mental health, academic stress and finding direction are interrelated and interconnected,  making them difficult to separate.

Let’s start with the academic side.

Academic stress is pervasive among students in high school and in post-secondary school. According to the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), who surveyed high school students in 72 countries, 66% of students get stressed about their grades. 55% of students feel very anxious about school testing and 37% report feeling very tense when studying. Students also reported feelings of personal inadequacy, interpersonal difficulties, and fear of failure, were major sources of stress. Academic stress contributes to issues related to anxiety and depression, sleep disturbances, substance use and diminished learning capacity and academic performance. 

Stress also impairs executive functions. Students who are stressed find it will have greater difficulties in terms of productivity, focus, emotion regulation, impulse control, time management and organization.

There is also a clear link between poor mental health and diminishing academic performance. Moreover, executive functions are impaired in many health disorders, such as addictions, ADHD, depression and OCD. This in turn will make it more difficult to achieve academic success. This forms a dangerous feedback loop.

Spinning?

Moving into the world of career counselling.

Having a sense of purpose and meaning is correlated with better mental health and well-being. Entire schools of evidence based psychotherapies, such as positive psychotherapy (PPT) and acceptance and commitment therapy (ACT) are devoted to this idea. Part of the reason people suffer is because of a disconnect with regards to their personal values. Therefore, learning to engage in valued behaviors, with a clear sense of our goals can improve our quality of life.

At the same time, many students who come for career counselling (60%) are experiencing psychological distress.

Here everything comes together.

There are reciprocal effects of the mental health and career development of college students. Experts are recommending an integrated approach, which fuses personal counselling or psychotherapy with career counselling, in order to maximize effectiveness.

When it comes to academic coaches, they are tasked to help students develop and improve executive function skills. Many students seek coaching for ADHD. Some executive function skills, such as emotion regulation and impulse control, are routinely used as mental health interventions across different therapeutic modalities. Bottom line: we exist on a continuum of mental health, which is also linked to our executive functioning. Mental health challenges and executive function struggles have overlapping symptomology.

And yet, academic coaches, for the most part, like career counsellors are not necessarily trained to deal with mental health issues.

One thing is clear from all of this information. In many situations, it is far too difficult to tease out what concerns are best suited for psychotherapists, academic coaches or career counsellors. What can be done about this?

An All-In-One Approach

Equip psychotherapists with training as academic coaches and career counsellors. This way, a student coming for support, can receive a combination of all types of support, even if one happens to be more emphasized than another. This will ensure that no issues go unaddressed due to a lack of competency from the helper.

It is for this reason that Resolvve is defining student mental health as involving psychotherapy, academic coaching and career counselling. A Resolvve therapist can help Jamie improve her symptoms by understanding they are interrelated.

Perhaps Jamie struggles to focus because she has trouble organizing a schedule.  Perhaps she doesn’t have the skills to cope with the anxiety of large university classrooms or the pressure of participation grades.  She might need help to manage her social anxiety.

Maybe she has no idea what she wants to study. Her parents want her to become a doctor but her heart isn’t into it. She wonders why she’s even sitting in her chemistry lecture. Resolvve would help her explore what majors would be meaningful or fulfilling for her. 

Either way, all possibilities are on the table to try and help Jamie improve her life, personally, academically, socially, professionally, and everything in between.

Why else does an integrative approach matter?

Less Onus on Students

The most important goal of Resolvve is to help students get the integrated support they need. Another benefit, however, is to reduce the unnecessary strain and stress of having to book appointments with three different professionals. As a student therapist at UBC Career Services, Barbara A. Smith, a Registered Clinical Counsellor in British Columbia, described this very issue as follows

“My experiences with clients have shown that they experience “telling-their-story fatigue” when they are referred to multiple service providers. Some clients cannot bear one more referral. Weary from attempting to navigate many different systems, they become frustrated and discouraged and “drop out” of services.”

It is hard enough to ask for help. Why make it harder for students at the expense of a less integrated and holistic support for their well-being? It is hard enough to be a student navigating any support system at school, yet alone three. Resolvve wants to afford students the opportunity to develop and grow in all areas of their life, with one support system, with whom they can learn to build trust and chemistry with over time.

Summing it Up

It is in the best interests of students to have integrated support for their interconnected and overlapping concerns in the areas of mental health, academic success and personal growth. They can get the help they need from one single service provider, who can understand them from many different angles. Instead of putting the onus on students to decide what type of support they need, let’s instead simplify their life and ensure that they can find what they need in one place.

At Resolvve, this is our number one priority, both with our approach to therapy, as well as the type of learning and educational modules we will have with our subscription.

Try a 15-minute consultation with our Resolvve therapists, or gain access to our integrated mental health learning.