STUDENTS, ‘WE GOT YOU’ By Amanda O’Rourke
SUSQUEHANNA RESPONDS TO RESTORE MENTAL HEALTH
Across the United States, more students are manifesting signs of emotional and psychological distress, commonly caused by the Covid pandemic. At Susquehanna, the confluence of external and internal stressors on students has been met with a countersurge of equal force: enhanced services and increased restorative support. Recent national headlines — from stories about the declining mental health of college students to suicides of several high-profile college athletes — bring into stark relief the challenges universities are facing.
Our students came through it, but you can’t ignore that,” Salerno says. “And all of those things that our students from underrepresented groups experience every day before the pandemic are ongoing during and after the pandemic.”
“Our students are a microcosm of what is happening in the country at large, and our students are struggling,” says Stacey Pearson-Wharton, dean of health and wellness at Susquehanna and director of counseling and psychological services. “We are seeing a lack of self-efficacy among our students, as well as increased depression, anxiety and social anxiety.”
“It is noteworthy that at the height of the pandemic — fall 2020 and spring 2021 — our student scores on frustration/anger scales and the academic distress scale were higher than they have ever been,” Pearson-Wharton says. She adds that this past academic year, their scores returned to typical levels.
While these problems were on the rise prior to the Covid pandemic, its onset and prolonged lifespan — combined with heightened political divisions — have exacerbated the issues many students were already facing. Dena Salerno, senior director of inclusion and diversity, has seen the impact on Susquehanna’s students from underrepresented groups. “At the same time a global pandemic was happening, the U.S. also was going through a racial reckoning.
4 · Susquehanna Currents · spr i ng/su m m er 2022
Concurrently, all student visits to CAPS (Counseling and Psychological Services) have risen 58% over the past two years. CAPS saw 409 unique new clients in 2019–20. That rose to nearly 600 in 2021–22. Susquehanna’s students’ struggles are not unique, as data from the 2021 Healthy Minds Study, produced by the nationwide network, shows 34% of U.S. college respondents struggle with anxiety disorder and 41% with depression — rates that have risen in recent years.
