February 19,
2007
Survey offers insight into how students cope with stress, pressures
Lead researcher Kerry Knox
More than 900 University undergraduates have
participated in a survey that may prompt changes to the way professionals
approach student mental health on six college campuses.
“We’re not just doing another
survey,” says Kerry Knox, associate professor of psychiatry and
community and preventive medicine. “It’s being done
specifically to benefit students and to improve mental health on
campuses.”
The Survey of Student Well-Being, which is being
administered on the River Campus as part of the University Center for the
Study and Prevention of Suicide, will give researchers a better sense of
how students cope with the pressures of college life and what helps them
live healthier and happier lives. The survey, though, is just one part of a
larger national effort.
Knox, the lead researcher of a multicampus suicide
prevention project, says the findings will ultimately lead to changes in
the way leaders, researchers, and staff members interact with students. She
is working closely with five other universities: Cornell, Massachusetts
Institute of Technology, Columbia, Harvard, and Princeton.
Representatives from all six universities began meeting
in 2004 to discuss ways to better prepare administrators, educators, and
mental health professionals against risk factors on college campuses and
ensure that the right kind of protective measures are in place. The
pro-ject consists of three parts: the surveys, “gatekeeper”
training for residential advisors and staff, and training for the
University Counseling Center mental health professionals. As of last
semester, 80 percent of the clinical staff at the University was trained
under the new standards, which prepares staff in areas of care or
counseling.
“There are other colleges certainly doing very
noteworthy things,” Knox says. “This is really a consortium of
these six schools . . . who all agreed to do these three things and do it
in a very systematic way and that is what is different about our
study.”
The consortium approach brings its advantages, because
the research has been duplicated at six different institutions, in six
different communities. These variations, Knox says, will offer a broader
understanding of students.
The survey results from all six universities, which
will likely be compiled by May, can provide insight into the behavior and
attitude of college students and in turn help researchers develop and
implement more effective programming and intervention training.
“There will be a lot of information for people to
digest, but I would anticipate that because we have this kind of momentum
we would like to have the next phase roll out soon,” Knox adds.
The goal of the project is to find out what types of
risks exist at the schools and the magnitude of the problems. Once those
are identified, appropriate changes to the existing structures can be made
and new methods of intervention or programming can be developed.
Linda Dudman, associate director for health
promotion for University Health Service (UHS), who helped promote and
administer the survey, says UHS and the Counseling Center strive to promote
healthy behaviors. In fact, they have used surveys in the past to measure
how students felt about health and behavior. Recently UHS administrators
determined that suicide prevention should be a primary focus area. UHS and
the Counseling Center have been working with Knox and her colleagues in the
Center for the Study and Prevention of Suicide for the past several years.
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