Faculty members can take a more active role in curbing the rising number of mental health problems among students by being attentive to academic performance and being open to students' personal concerns, Dean of Students Penny Rue said.
This semester, Rue and Russ Federman, director of the Counseling Center with U.Va. Counseling and Psychological Services, have initiated a series of information sessions concerning student mental health with the faculty of various schools within the University. During the sessions, faculty members are presented with statistics gathered from the National College Health Assessment Survey and data from CAPS, among other sources.
"Our intent with this was to give the faculty an overview of the current mental health issues that students are dealing with," Federman said.
Rue and Federman said they also are seeking to educate the faculty on signs and symptoms of mental health problems, instructing them on ways of approaching students to address problems they may have.
The forum was prompted by a "growing awareness of the mental health issues that many students are dealing with," Federman said.
Forty-five percent of University students randomly sampled have reported psychological episodes so severe that they can't perform properly. So far in 2005, 50 students have been hospitalized for psychological reasons, Rue said.
Teaching assistants and professors have the most direct contact with students and, according to Federman, may best understand the academic rigors that students face and could play an important role in aiding students.
"The faculty can be the first to observe that a student is in distress," Federman said.
Often the first sign of mental health problems in students is a decline in academic performance, and teachers and professors are the first to take notice of this, Rue said.
Approaching the students can be a powerful intervention tool, she said.
Rue and Federman urged the faculty members of the departments they visited to be proactive in addressing students who may have a problem.
"Most of our students feel like they should be able to handle things on their own, and are loath to ask for help," Rue said.
Rue and Federson presented their findings and tips to the Architecture School, among other departments, and faculty members there said they found the information to be very useful.
"Many of the faculty members have seen these symptoms in students firsthand, and now they've had someone with expertise to confirm their suspicions," Architecture School Associate Dean Bruce Dotson said.
Dotson said faculty members were not sure what to do, or whether they had the proper training to help students deal with mental health problems.
"The two presenters assured us that the best approach was not to offer advice, but to offer an ear," he said.
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