features
spring 2024
By Greg Gatlin
Illustrations by Vivian Mineker
It wasn’t an overstuffed backpack. Rather, Oppong, a member of the Class of 2026, was lugging around some less-visible burdens. Adjusting to college was harder than she expected. Oppong, whose parents emigrated to the US from Ghana, had attended a majority Black charter high school in Worcester. In her early days at Suffolk, she found herself feeling isolated in classes where she was sometimes one of the few students of color.
A fear of failure also weighed on her. An honors biology major and psychology minor, she worried she might not do well academically and that she would disappoint her family. “My parents didn’t move here for me not to succeed, you know what I mean?”
On top of all that, Oppong carries what she describes as “an invisible disability”: sickle cell anemia, a condition that affects blood flow and can cause more severe health problems. “But if you look at me,” she says, “you wouldn’t be able to tell that.”
Medical appointments caused her to miss classes. Other challenges started to pop up. The pressure grew. And suddenly, she would freeze up.
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During her freshman year at Suffolk, Jadyn Oppong didn’t realize just how much weight she was carrying on her shoulders.
WE TALK WITH FACULTY AND AN ALUMNA ABOUT FACTORS THAT ARE FUELING MENTAL HEALTH CHALLENGES AMONG YOUNG PEOPLE—AND EXPLORE POSSIBLE REMEDIES.
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Alleyne’s referral is illustrative of a proactive, holistic, and comprehensive approach that Suffolk is taking to support student mental health and emotional well-being. The University has enlisted the broader campus community in fostering what President Marisa Kelly calls “a culture of caring, where students are empowered to seek the help and support they need.”
While the Counseling, Health & Wellness Center remains central to that student support and treatment, there is consensus at Suffolk that it takes more than counseling to address the problem. The University is taking an all-hands approach that includes mental health training for faculty in the classroom and staff across departments, from Student Affairs to Athletics to undergraduate, graduate, and Law School Orientation; growing numbers of programs and initiatives focused on prevention, well-being, and belonging; and myriad student mentors and peer-health educators.
“We are thinking about how we increase access for students to care when they need it, and how we can take a community-based approach to meeting this generation’s needs,” says Stephanie Kendall, Suffolk’s director of Counseling, Health & Wellness and a clinical psychologist. “Because many of the struggles they are facing are generational. Suffolk is not the problem. Boston is not the problem. There is something deeper going on.”
What’s going on is by all accounts a national youth mental health crisis. In 2021, Dr. Vivek Murthy, the Surgeon General of the United States, issued an advisory, reserved for urgent public health issues, calling attention to the devastating effects of youth mental health challenges. National surveys were already showing alarming increases in the numbers of young people reporting persistent feelings of sadness, hopelessness, anxiety, and suicidality prior to COVID-19. The massive changes brought on by the pandemic—from isolation at home, disrupted academics, and forced physical distance to deaths of caregivers and loved ones, economic instability, and a pervasive sense of fear—only exacerbated the crisis.
At the same time, concerns have been mounting about the impact of technology, including screen usage and social media. In many ways, COVID intensified what was there all along: The pandemic took young people who were already spending hours on screens and put them on screens all day long. And while technology can foster connections and social support, research also points to profound harm, including sleep disruption, distraction, displacement of in-person engagement, lowered self-esteem, and depression.
Tech companies have been accused of fueling the crisis by targeting young people with harmful content and advertising on algorithm-driven and addictive social media platforms. One research study by the Center for Countering Digital Hate set up a TikTok account for fictitious 13-year-olds, only to have those accounts bombarded with recommended videos on body image, eating disorders, and suicide content—results the center described as “every parent’s nightmare.”
When you factor in high-profile mass shootings, natural disasters and growing anxiety around climate change, racial injustice, devastating wars around the globe, and political polarization at home—not to mention the normal stress of adolescence—the combined pressures on young people can feel “insurmountable,” according to the American Psychological Association.
Convinced that the mental health crisis is severe but not insurmountable, Suffolk is addressing it head on. In October 2022, President Kelly announced that the University had become a JED Campus, joining the flagship program of the nationally recognized Jed Foundation, which provides universities with training and tools to support student emotional health. A campus-wide JED Task Force had already begun engaging stakeholders in self-assessment, strategic planning, and implementation of initiatives related to undergraduate, graduate, and law student mental health as well as suicide and self-harm prevention.
“JED was this investment by President Kelly and the University to actually look at the whole University and figure out if we are doing OK on suicide prevention and mental health,” Kendall says. “A lot of schools do it after they have a big crisis. But we proactively invested in JED. We wanted to make sure we were doing the best we could.”
The task force’s initial recommendations, including strengthening policies around leaves of absence and hospitalizations, were quickly implemented. Students were confidentially surveyed about their mental health needs, perceptions of campus resources, and the University’s mental health climate through a Healthy Minds study.
“The results simply confirmed the fact that we are no worse and no better in this crisis than the rest of the country,” Kendall says. “Our results writ large look close to the national average. It means we need to continue doing what we’re doing.”
Responding to a national crisis
“It feels like a pressure of being overwhelmed sometimes,” Oppong explains, sitting in her residence hall room, framed by the horizontal red, yellow, and green stripes of the Ghanaian flag over her bed. “Sometimes I can have a freeze response. You’re frozen in the pressure, if that makes sense.”
That’s when Professor Sonia Alleyne, MPA ’21, stepped in. Oppong was taking Alleyne’s course on nonprofits and social change in the Sawyer Business School (SBS). Alleyne is also a Black woman, and Oppong felt a closeness with her. “So I just emailed her and told her where I was at.”
It proved to be a good move. Alleyne, who is attuned to the myriad pressures her students can face, often invites representatives from Suffolk CARES—a campus organization that helps students find the resources they need, including referrals for mental health support—to speak to her classes. Alleyne put Oppong in touch with Doreen Floyd, Suffolk CARES director of student outreach & support, who connected her with a counselor from Suffolk’s Counseling, Health & Wellness Center.
“That was a really positive experience,” Oppong says. “I felt like I had an extra weight on my shoulders, and it seemed like every time I would go to counseling and talk about things, it was like I was offloading that weight, so I’d feel so much lighter. I didn’t realize how much I was carrying on my own.”
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Fostering a sense of belonging
As part of its comprehensive approach, the University has elevated its focus on what Kendall calls “belongingness.” It’s the feeling that you matter to a particular group, that you are important and cared about.
“When that is threatened—either by a feeling of isolation or reaching out for help and not getting it—our sense of belongingness is lost. We feel like an outsider or that we don’t matter,” she says. “In the mental health world, that contributes to a feeling of social isolation, stress, loneliness. If left untreated, it can grow into something bigger.”
Peter Fowler, BA ’97, MED ’06, Suffolk’s assistant provost for retention, does a lot of thinking about belongingness, and he’s working across campus to get stakeholders to think more about it too. Fowler says research shows that outcomes are better for students who feel like they are connected.
Fowler and others are working to facilitate that sense of belonging in and outside of the classroom. In the past, student organizations and clubs were largely seen as the default opportunities for involvement, Fowler says. “But we have to think about this as a campus-wide effort,” he says.
The University is increasing its programming to help students bond in the residence halls, including service-based community programs that facilitate a sense of connection with each other and with the city. In the fall, Suffolk will also increase its first-year experience programming to add more social elements to the first six weeks of the semester so that students have more opportunities to meet one another and develop friendships.
Building stronger student-faculty connections is also a priority. Next fall, faculty in the College of Arts & Sciences (CAS) First-Year Seminars and the Sawyer Business School Business Foundations program will have more opportunities with students outside of the classroom—field trips to local companies and nonprofit organizations, for example. “These are small classes, so they lend themselves well to relationship-building, not just with other students but with faculty,” Fowler says.
Students’ work-study jobs can also foster that critical sense of belonging, Fowler says, so Suffolk has beefed up resources and support for employee managers that can help facilitate students’ professional development. And as part of first-year experience courses in CAS and SBS next fall, he adds, two of the class units will focus on resilience and well-being. “They will talk about the importance of sleep, coping strategies, stress management, how do I identify my stress point.”
Jadyn Oppong has learned how to identify stress points. It’s something she talks a lot about at the Counseling, Health & Wellness Center, where she is now a nationally certified Suffolk University Peer-Health Educator (nicknamed SUPERs), providing health and wellness information and educational programming for other students. Because of her own positive experience with counseling, when she saw a posting for Counseling, Health & Wellness peer-health educators on Instagram, she applied and got the position. She’s now helping others.“We go into classrooms, and we talk about self-care,” Oppong says.
“We help students acknowledge their stress, and they create their own stress profile. It’s just a way of noticing when they’re getting stressed so now they can say, ‘Let me take a break from everything and do something that’s relaxing or fulfills another need I may be lacking when I’m stressed.’”
Oppong’s own stress relievers include playing the guitar and learning to crochet. The goal, she says, is to notice the stress and take a step back from it. “Even just lying in bed listening to music, just small things like that help me take my mind off the situation.”
Meeting students where they are
Counseling, Health & Wellness and peer-health educators are also spreading the word through tabling and “Wellness on Wheels” programs, regularly visiting residence halls and academic buildings to discuss topics like sleep, suicide prevention, and sexual health. This year, they started offering evening sessions to reach more graduate and law students, who are now making greater use of the wellness center.
Realizing that students of color needed a space to talk about the specific mental health challenges they face, Bea Patiño, director of Suffolk’s Center for Student Diversity & Inclusion, and Natasha Torkelson, assistant director for DEI, Counseling Health & Wellness, came up with the idea of a forum where students from marginalized populations could describe their mental health experiences, stressors, and support they’ve found. From that came “Chew on This,” a series of student-led panel discussions with topics that have included Mental Health Stigma & BIPOC Communities; Growing Up Biracial & Multiracial; Reflections on Experiences of BIPOC First-Gen Seniors; Destigmatizing Mental Health in the Latinx/Latine Community; Understanding Depression; and others.
“We’re really happy we found a forum where students feel like they can be heard,” Torkelson says. Adds Patiño: “For many of them, there’s something beautiful about being on a panel where people are there to listen to you, and where you can express what you’re going through. A lot of connections have come out of that.”
Student-athletes can face their own mental-health challenges. A 2022 NCAA survey found 22% of male athletes say they feel “mentally exhausted,” and the figure rises to 38% for female athletes. While two-thirds of student-athletes nationwide said they knew where to find mental health support on their campus, less than half said they would be comfortable seeking it.
Increasing mental health awareness among athletes has been a key focus for Suffolk’s Athletics Department, particularly for Associate Director Adam Skaggs, who has run a series of workshops on mental health topics. Joining him in these efforts is women’s soccer team member Alyssa Belmont, Class of 2026, a campus captain for the Hidden Opponent, a national advocacy group that provides student-athletes with resources to manage the anxiety and burnout that can accompany college-level competitive sports. Belmont is sharing what she’s learned with Suffolk’s athletic teams and creating a platform for them to talk about their own struggles, something Skaggs calls “truly rewarding to see.”
Honors biology major Jadyn Oppong draws on her own experiences in her work as a Suffolk University Peer-Health Educator (SUPER), helping other students learn how to manage their stress and anxiety.
‘Life is not meant to be alone’
All these initiatives go a long way in reducing isolation, Kendall says, adding,
“An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure.”
Still, Kendall emphasizes preventative measures are not a replacement for treatment for those students with more serious mental health concerns.
That’s why all University medical appointments also screen for mental health conditions. The Counseling, Health & Wellness Center offers walk-in, same-day appointments and access to 24-hour phone counseling. It is making it easier for students to get connected to that service, and training faculty and staff—who may be the first to notice when students have stopped attending classes or are struggling academically—on making referrals.
“We don’t need to label people to get them help,” Amanda McGrath, dean of undergraduate student affairs, told attendees at a recent faculty and staff training. “Just saying, ‘I see you may be having a hard time. I have a colleague who can help. Can I connect you with them?’ is an important step.”
Meanwhile, Suffolk CARES is working with students dealing with contextual challenges—such as financial stress, academic concerns, family crises, bias, or access to food—that can lead to mental health issues. “Sometimes a student just needs to go to a funeral and needs help with professors,” Kendall says. “The University is saying, ‘Let us help you. Are you doing OK or do you need more? That touchpoint gets them connected with us, and lets them know that they are not alone.”
As she nears the end of her sophomore year, Oppong says that while things aren’t perfect, they’re better. She has found a community in the SUPERs and in the Youth Empowerment Ministry, a Christian faith-based group.
“What freshman year taught me especially is that it’s good to have a community of people that you can trust. When things happen, they can show up for you and you can talk to them,” she says. “I don’t ever want to go back to a place where I’m feeling so heavy, and I might not even know it. In my religion, we always say life is not meant to be alone. We have people for a reason, and you’ll get farther with people than if you are alone.”
PLUS,
WE TALK WITH FACULTY ABOUT FACTORS THAT ARE FUELING MENTAL HEALTH CHALLENGES AMONG YOUNG PEOPLE—AND EXPLORE POSSIBLE REMEDIES.