Emerging Voices in Higher Education: Studying Mental Health Utilizing Lived Experiences

• In Event: Fairmont Roundtable Session Four
  In Roundtable Session: Campus Climate Research Into Curriculum Studies: Curricular Examinations of a Decade of Qualitative and Quantitative Research (Table 4)

Abstract

This paper reports findings from quantitative data collected through multiple surveys that assessed the experiences and perceptions of living, learning, and working environments for students in higher education. Emphasis will be placed on the advocacy inherent to participatory and community-based processes in survey design, leading to more tailored survey questions and meaningful respondent data that helps us better understand mental health challenges, how they relate to campus climate, and best practices in designing support services. As Oswalt et al. (2020) captured, mental health issues exist and are widespread on college campuses “with one-third of undergraduates exhibiting significant symptoms of a mental health problem” such as depression, anxiety, bipolar disorder, attention deficit and hyperactivity disorder, schizophrenia, and eating disorders. (p. 41). These mental health conditions are correlated with negative outcomes such as decreased GPA, compromised medical health, substance use, self-injurious behaviors, recidivism from the institution, and suicidality. The authors further posit that “prevalence of college student mental health issue may be increasing” (p. 42).

How students experience and perceive campus climate influences outcomes related to their campus experience including sense of belonging (Museus et al., 2017; Rankin & Reason, 2005; Strayhorn, 2012, 2013), persistence and retention (Booker, 2016; García & Garza, 2016); and overall wellbeing (Gummadam et al., 2016). Minority stress theory (Meyer, 2003) posits that individuals who hold sexual minority identities face unique stress owing to unwelcoming environments where bias and discrimination occur. This translates to students in higher education who hold sexual minority identities and other minoritized identities (e.g., race, gender, [dis]ability, income status); that is, the common stress experienced by all students in higher education is augmented by minority stress that may lead to characteristically different health and academic outcomes (Booker, 2016; Blumenfeld et al., 2016; Brown et al., 2017; Means & Pyne, 2017).

The main motivation driving this paper is that the research discussed earlier, despite its evidenced growth over time, is limited in its capacity to explain how campus climate is related to the widespread and increasing mental health challenges among students in higher education, especially minoritized students. Using the lived experience conceptualization by Pinar (2011), I examine the means by which mental health data was gathered with the goal of amplifying the voices of student respondents with mental health conditions. Further, I will focus on the participation and actions of community members in shaping the survey questions that helped capture the emerging data on mental health risk on college and university campuses.

Author

• Genevieve Weber, Hofstra University
  Presenting Author