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Framing Mental Health Support to Increase Flourishing: An Inclusive Strategy That Can Open Doors, Increase Engagement, and Boost Student Success

Framing Mental Health Support to Increase Flourishing: An Inclusive Strategy That Can Open Doors, Increase Engagement, and Boost Student Success

As the American College Health Association (https://www.acha.org/ncha/data-results/survey-results/academic-year-2023-2024/), the Healthy Minds Network (https://healthymindsnetwork.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/09/HMS_national_report_090924.pdf), and the Association for University and College Counseling Center Directors (https://www.aucccd.org/public) report, college students are experiencing mental illness and other psychological challenges in ever-increasing numbers (ACHA, 2024; HMN, 2024; AUCCCD, 2023).  Reactions to these reports often place the onus of responsibility on counseling center staff to fix the problem, while other campus personnel view the situation as outside their scope of expertise.  The work of Keyes (2006; 2002) and others (Iasiello et al., 2020; Antaramian, 2015; Ross, 2015; Eklund et al., 2011; Suldo & Shaffer, 2008), however, has demonstrated that complete mental health exists along two intersecting continua, a dual continua model of mental health.  Individuals fall along one continuum between the presence or absence of mental illness and simultaneously fall along a second continuum between low or high levels of mental health.  While behavioral health providers are uniquely positioned to provide clinical treatment of mental illness symptoms, a much larger pool of supporters could be trained to offer interventions to boost flourishing mental health (Seligman, 2011).   

This webinar will share how focusing on flourishing can excite students, faculty, staff, and administrators as they see places they could fit in a larger, full-scale promotion of mental health and support more students.  It will also discuss case studies and a pilot program offered at the presenter's institution to help attendees brainstorm for their own campus contexts, build a better advocacy pitch for stakeholders, and generate more buy-in to help build an institutional culture of care.

 

Learning Outcomes:

  1. Contrast the traditional single continuum model of mental health with the newer, more comprehensive dual continua model of mental health
  2. Describe the prevalence of flourishing mental health among college student populations.
  3. Examine case studies of school-based flourishing interventions and pilot programs and their impacts on student success.
  4. Discuss how framing mental health efforts around flourishing promotion can increase engagement in campus-wide intervention strategies and thus serve more students.

Lisa Schrader

Distance Learning Lecturer

Middle Tennessee State University

Lisa Schrader has worked for twenty years in higher education contexts, first as a health educator, then as a student affairs director, and most recently as a faculty member in the department of Health and Human Performance at Middle Tennessee State University (MTSU).While serving as the Director of Health Promotion at MTSU, she was concerned by the growing numbers of distressed students and felt inadequate to meet their needs. This sense of inadequacy launched her search for strategies that could be used by campus administrators, students, and other stakeholders without didactic backgrounds in behavioral health. That search led to her doctoral dissertation on flourishing and positive psychology interventions and their impact on student success and psychological distress. She currently serves as on the executive committee of the Coalition for Healthy and Safe CampusCommunities (CHASCo), a statewide higher education prevention coalition in Tennessee, and she provides technical assistance to colleges and universities that lack a dedicated health promotion or prevention staff person.

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