College students are facing record rates of anxiety and depression this fall due to the pandemic.
College students have a lot to deal with this year as they head back to campus, and it’s taking a toll on their mental health. Rates of anxiety, depression and burn out have been steadily rising in college kids for years, but those numbers have increased substantially after a year and a half of pandemic.
Students are not coping well. According to a recent survey from Ohio State University’s Wellness Officer, college kids are relying more heavily on unhealthy means of coping. To remedy this, Ohio State has created a “Five to Thrive” wellness strategy for students. Meanwhile, another recent study conducted at the University of Colorado Denver, finds that adding elements of play to higher education can reduce burn out in students.
Mental health on campus
Ohio State’s "return to campus" survey echoes mental health data on college students throughout the U.S. The surveys, conducted in August 2020 and April 2021, looked at both the positive such as healthy lifestyle behaviors and the negative such as changes in mental health and less than healthy coping strategies. 1,072 Ohio State students responded.
The already high rate of anxiety among students in August 2020 of 39% rose to 42.6% in April 2021. Over the same timeframe, depression rose from 24.1% to 28.3%, and burnout rose from 40% to 70%. For perspective, these numbers went from absurdly high to astronomical.
Even though healthy coping strategies help combat anxiety, depression and burnout, it is also normal for people to turn to unhealthy strategies instead. The problem here is that these “comforting” strategies also tend to worsen the very mental health problems we use them to address.
From August 2020, when students were already facing pandemic stress, to April 2021, the students turned to eating more unhealthy food (25% to 29%), used more alcohol t0 cope (15.5% to 18%), and used more tobacco or vaping (6% to 8%). On the other hand, students turned away from using “increased physical activity,” dropping from 35% to 28%.
However, there is one positive sign, more students began seeing a mental health counselor (13% to 22%), which is one of the healthiest steps they could take. Still, with 70% of students screening positive for burnout in April 2021, that means over two thirds of the students who would have benefitted from counseling help did not get it.
"Mental health promotion and access to services and evidence-based programs are going to be more important than ever," said Bernadette Melnyk, vice president for health promotion, chief wellness officer and dean of the College of Nursing at Ohio State in a press release. "Two-thirds of students who are no longer in college are not in college due to a mental health issue. We would not send divers into a deep ocean without an oxygen tank. How can we send our students throughout life without giving them the resiliency, cognitive-behavioral skills and coping mechanisms that we know are protective against mental health disorders and chronic disease?"
Ohio State has responded to the survey findings by adding resources, and more importantly, integrating them into curricula and campus life. This is critical, because students are far more likely to seek mental health services when they know how to access them, and it is “normal” to do so.
One resource is the “Five to Thrive” mental health checklist, which students are encouraged to start using even before they return to campus. But like so many other burnout interventions, the checklist focuses on what the students are doing and less on the structure of their learning environment.
Adding play to learning
A long-standing bias in educational research states that there is a distinct difference between adult and child learning. Yet research in other domains of human performance and wellbeing consistently find childlike behaviors such as daydreaming or play are as important for adults as they are for kids.
Now, Lisa Forbes of the University of Colorado Denver has published a new study in the Journal of Teaching and Learning that overturns the long-held belief that play is only for elementary education. Specifically, college students who were taught with methods that incorporated play stayed more engaged and motivated than they were with a traditional lecture-based method.
For anyone who fought to stay awake during lectures in college while their friends snored beside them, this feels like a long-awaited recognition.
"As we grow older, we're conditioned to believe that play is trivial, childish, and a waste of time," said Forbes in a press release. "This social script about play leads to it being excluded from higher education. A more interactive learning approach leads to a deeper and more rigorous connection to the material."
To prove it, Forbes studied learners aged 23-43 in three of her courses. She started each class with games and play, sometimes related to the lesson’s content and sometimes not. Students also had opportunities for role-play during class, and participated in classroom competitions.
Their feedback? Students reported seeing more opportunities for growth and that they learned the material more deeply. Even more exciting, the students noted that play brought them more positive emotions and connection with other students and the professor in the course. In a word, play reduced their stress.
"I also saw that when I introduced play, it helped students let their guard down and allowed them to reduce their stress, fear, or anxiety," said Forbes. "Play even motivated students to be vulnerably engaged, take risks, and feel more connected to the content."
Making changes in higher education, particularly in the style of teaching, can take years. But with colleges facing crisis levels of stress and mental health struggles in students, professors would do well to take note of the power of play.
