Supporting Student Wellness
Dr. Dawn-Elise Snipes, Director AllCEUs.com
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Objectives
~ General guidelines for supporting student mental health
~ Specific information regarding student athletes
~ Explore some information relevant to students regarding alcohol and drug use and disordered eating
~ Identify the basics for early crisis intervention
~ One in every 12 U.S. college students makes a suicide plan, according to National Data on Campus Suicide and Depression.
~ One in four adults experience mental illness in a given year, according to the National Alliance on Mental Illness.
~ In 2015 students were asked if they worried their food would run out before they had money to buy more. Nearly a quarter (22 percent) of undergraduate students answered yes to this question
~ 32 percent of female students reported experiencing sexual assault within their lifetime Association of American Universities survey
~ CDC finds sharp increases in three sexually transmitted diseases, and young adults account for a majority of these cases. (11/3/2016)
~ 30–70% of those seeking treatment for an eating disorder receive medical treatment for weight loss, indicating that individuals with eating disorders are much more likely to receive treatment for a perceived weight problem than mental health treatment for an eating disorder.
~ 4.4–5.9% of teens enter college with a pre–existing, untreated eating disorder
General
~ Find a “champion” who will support the student well-being initiative
~ Promote positive behaviors and benefits of health promotion
~ Demonstrate a genuine interest in student success (academics, extracurricular, athletics etc)
~ Engage athletic trainers, directors of residence life and resident assistants, house moms/dads, professors and apartment managers
General
~ Communicate about the consequences of not seeking help and the benefits of early intervention
~ Normalize/destigmatize mental health issues
~ Due to strong cohesion of certain groups, understanding and addressing group (athletics, sorority/fraternity) norms about health and safety behavior an important educational strategy
~ Train peer health educators
~ Be aware of high stress times: Rush, Try-outs, midterms, finals, before breaks, after breaks
~ Be alert to signs of hazing and have a clear policy and procedure for handling hazing reports
Student Athletes
~ Just because student-athletes are generally a healthy population does not mean that they are immune to mental health issues.
~ Because of this perception, student-athletes may be even more reluctant than a non-athlete student to seek help.
~ Pressures related to scholarships, academic and athletic performance and being in the spotlight (good and bad attention), reaction to injury, overtraining add to student athlete’s stressors.
~ Key people influencing student-athlete decision-making are coaches, teammates, and parents.
Student Athletes
~ Programing for student-athletes must consider timing issues, such as differences in alcohol use, dieting, workout schedule, and time availability in the off-season compared to the competitive season
~ Student-athletes may experience an increase in anxiety when exposed to a new coaching style and/or team
~ Coaches need to be particularly responsive and careful with depressed student-athletes as they may interpret interactions and communication more negatively than intended
~ Establish a practice of following up with student-athletes who suffer career-ending injury or otherwise are disconnected from the team
Alcohol Awareness
~ Alcohol use inhibits absorption of nutrients and diminishes protein synthesis, resulting in decreased mu