This survey, the National College Health Assessment, was conducted by MSU University Health and Wellbeing — the division tasked with addressing the problem. 

University Health and Wellbeing (UHW) was created two years ago through the integration of 11 different units, said Executive Director Alexis Travis. UHW is comprised of four pillars, each suited to specific student needs.

"It's really intentional to have an integrated approach to mental health, as opposed to everybody kind of working in silos," she said. 

Although UHW has been effective in integrating services, the numbers show it's not enough. 

To contend with this issue, UHW is creating a committee to address suicide, integrating its mental health resources to be more effective, and looking to be proactive in its outreach. 

UHW hopes this approach not only provides resources for students, but also ensures they are making use of them. 

Addressing suicide 

One of the primary issues UHW has been tasked with addressing is the growing rate of suicides among students. 

Data collected by the Dean of Students Office revealed that since it began recording suicide rates on campus in 2020, the highest number was recorded last year.

Taking away the stigma of talking about suicide is a high priority for University Health and Wellbeing, Travis said.

Travis, alongside her division, is working on forming a suicide mortality review committee in partnership with Ingham County. 

"This is really to look at data related to our student suicides at MSU, and understand it from both a quantitative and qualitative perspective," Travis said.

The committee is hoping to start work later this semester or early next year at the latest, she said.

Leigh Norwood, the recently appointed executive director of Mental Health and Trauma Support Services, helped define the priorities for this committee when she came to MSU, she said.

"The university acknowledged the need for this, the community acknowledged the need for it," she said. "But once the need is identified, you have to be able to plan out what that's going to look like."

Additionally, MSU wants to include Ingham County officials, like its health officer and medical examiner, in these conversations because they have more data, Norwood said. 

The committee’s primary goal is to determine better ways to resource programs, Norwood said. This includes determining whether programs are able to adequately address their scopes, and then creating new ones if needed.

"The scope of programs can look like postvention, so resources that are utilized after someone has unfortunately committed suicide, or it can look like prevention, so outreach programs," she said.

Integrating services 

Norwood said her largest priority is to help integrate the departments she manages. These include Counseling and Psychiatric services (CAPS), the Employee Assistance Program and the Center for Survivors. 

"MSU is big," she said. "It is imaginably big, with over 50,000 students."

Due to this size, the departments have experienced capacity issues when meeting students’ needs, while also lacking connectivity between departments. Norwood is working to make these departments work together in sync, she said.

This integration has also benefited how CAPS can care for students, said Swapna Hingwe, the CAPS director.

Students benefit from having several interconnected resources and departments on campus that all provide mental health services targeting different issues, Hingwe said.

"We can't approach things with a one size fits all," she said. "We really have to try to approach it from more of a public health standpoint. Gone are the days where it all happened in an office with your clinician. It's very much: What are students looking for? They're looking for engagement. They're looking for education. They're looking for peer support."

Improving outreach

Since the Feb. 13, 2023 campus shooting that killed three and injured five students, the university has been in a reactive mode toward students, Hingwe said. 

Now, CAPS is looking toward a more proactive approach to its outreach. 

That means going to student organizations and holding community events and workshops, which Hingwe said is made easier through the support provided under the UHW umbrella. 

Outreach to students on the margins has been a particular focus for Hingwe, she said.

Students on the margins may be reluctant to access resources and may have certain barriers or intersectional identities that make it difficult to access services while feeling safe, Hingwe explained. These groups include, but are not limited to: international students, LGBTQIA+ students, students of color, student parents, veterans, first generation students, students with disabilities and transfer students.

"When we center those most vulnerable students, then we're able to actually serve everyone," Hingwe said.

There is always work to do with outreach toward those groups, she said. Focusing on ensuring all groups feel safe and a sense of belonging on campus can help better direct people to mental health resources.

But safety is not easily defined, Hingwe said. 

"I think there are certain groups on campus who feel a lot less safe than other groups," she said. "We're like our own city, essentially. We're like this microcosm of what's going on all over the country. There are bias incidents, and there are people who are feeling that they're on the margins, and there are people who feel unsafe."

"Part of our job is to try to understand how to help those communities feel more of a sense of belonging while they're here."

Why is this happening?

Crystal Cederna, an associate professor in the Charles Stewart Mott Department in the College of Human Medicine, said people of all populations are experiencing a mental health crisis. College students are just one of many affected demographics. 

Factors impacting student mental health span individual, relational, community, policy and societal levels, she said. Each level contributes to a perfect storm once combined in everyday life.

"When you think about college students of today, they're living through large scale natural and manmade disasters," Cederna said.

These include but are not limited to: civil unrest on and off campus, legal infringements on bodily autonomy and medical decision making, wars, traumatic events, post Covid-19 deaths and grief, continued injustices and discrimination targeting many marginalized cultural identities.

The reverberations of the February 2023 campus shooting can also still be felt by those affected.

"If it did evoke a trauma-level response in someone, the body does not quickly forget those types of events," she said.

Any future threat resembling that event can invoke a physiological response in someone, Cederna said. It could make someone more vigilant to their surroundings and interpret neutral things in worrisome or protective ways because their body is trying to keep them safe.

"It's like your fire alarm system becomes very, very sensitive for smoke, and sometimes it will alarm when there isn't even smoke, out of an abundance of caution for self preservation," she said.

These stressors can increase someone’s "cognitive load," which Cederna said makes it harder to "handle the stressors that come with college life."

This creates a ripple effect that then gives way to increased anxiety and hopelessness in students.

"That level of stress that college students are experiencing is requiring unprecedented amounts of resources," she said. "Simply put, the demand is so much higher than what we can supply right now."

Cederna said students on the margins may neglect resources due to mistrust created by discrimination and injustices they may have experienced in the past. 

"Oftentimes, even unknowingly, our systems continue to perpetuate differences in treatment — recognition of problems, approach to management — and that's the impact of implicit bias," Cederna said.

Moreover, many mental health providers do not recognize the cultural identities and lived experiences of certain subpopulations, Cederna said.

"The more we can get a workforce that aligns with the cultural identities and lived experiences and needs of our college students, the more likely they will be to enter them," she said.

In light of these stressors, Cederna said students can take care of themselves by being self-reflective. Swaying moods and consistent anxiety are red flags indicating someone should seek help through professional means, peers or social connectivity. 

"Reaching out to your college campus resources is the best thing that they can do," she said.