Meera Menon is an assistant professor of psychiatry at the Ohio State University Medical Center where she specializes in young adult mental health. She offered her top tips for college students looking to manage the stressors of higher education, as well as how to find and access mental health resources on campuses across the country.
Meera Menon, M.D.
Chair, Caucus on College Mental Health, American Psychiatric Association
How does pursuing higher education affect students’ mental health?
While pursuing higher education can come with its own set of stressors, it actually can be a really protective environment. Being a college or university student provides the structure of having a set schedule, a set routine. Meals and housing are more readily available. There are coordinated support systems, places to exercise and do different wellness activities, and places for mental health treatment.
Largely, students and young adults tend to be healthier while living on a college campus. I think there are things to be wary of, like learning how to transition to living life on your own without close family supports. Students also need to learn how to navigate decisions about substance use.
Have there been any recent developments in higher education that have significantly impacted students’ mental health or their ability to access mental health resources?
During the COVID-19 pandemic, many universities had access to CARES Act funds, and a lot of those funds were used to support mental health resources. They created funds to support students who needed to be in the hospital for mental health reasons, or to seek different, higher levels of care, or even ongoing psychotherapy in some schools.
Ohio State University, for example, has been able to maintain this fund and continue to support students’ mental health long after the height of the pandemic. Many other colleges and universities are trying to create more programs to improve the mental health of students.
Another thing that’s happening more and more on college campuses is the development of preventative programming to build resilience and mental wellness — trying to prevent students from needing to enter treatment more urgently by giving them the skills they need to address their mental health upfront. There’s been a shift to that more preventative support, which I think is really helpful.
What mental health resources are available to and should be utilized by students in higher education?
Mental health resources do vary from college to college, so what I would recommend is using your residential adviser (RA) or a faculty member as resources to identify some of the different resources on campus. You should also have opportunities during orientation to learn about some of the different resources available to you.
Many campuses have counseling centers that include therapy and may even include medication management. If your college has a student wellness center,
those typically have a lot of really good programs to help improve overall mental health and wellness.
Here at Ohio State, the Student Wellness Center has financial coaching. They might not tell you specifics about where to invest your money, but they’ll talk to you about the risks of certain types of investments and how to make a budget, both of which are stressful things to learn about once you’re on your own. We also have nutrition coaching, so if you want to meet with a professional dietitian, you have that available.
I would also recommend that you look at the different resources on campus to learn coping strategies. For example, your college counseling center will likely have programs where they teach how to deal with and overcome perfectionism, or how to manage anxiety around finals and other big exams.
One last thing I’ll recommend is for students to get involved. It’s really easy to feel isolated on campus because you’re in a new environment and you’re not necessarily bringing all your friends from childhood with you. Getting involved in a student organization that interests you can be a really good way to make friends and build your community, which is an important way to avoid feeling isolated.
I think a lot of college students are feeling more and more isolated because of aftereffects of the COVID-19 pandemic. It is really useful to join these different organizations if only to learn how to make friends and build those connections.
