It's Wednesday, October 30th, and this is the 19 09, the state news's weekly podcast featuring our reporters talking about the news. I'm your host, Alex Walters. This week, campus mental health is in crisis. Michigan State University surveys and suicide rates are prompting rising concern about the well-being of its students. Our reporter has dug into that data and talked to advocates hoping to turn that tide, and he's here to talk to us all today.
Alex:So, Anish, thank you for coming on the show.
Anish:Thank you for having me.
Alex:Yeah. This is a great story that you wrote, tackling a tough topic, and you were able to get into both kind of the details of the problem, but also a little bit more of a hopeful view from some of these people that are really interested in actually kind of solving it. So I thought, yeah, you could come on today. But, you know, the rest of this conversation where we're talking about mental health this, mental health that, I wanna be more specific about that term because I think sometimes we throw it around without explaining it. Can you tell me when you talk about surveys and whatnot indicating, like, poor mental health of students, what does that actually mean?
Alex:What are what are the specific kind of, like, issues and conditions that they're, like, diagnosing with this term, you know, of student mental health when they give that metric.
Anish:Yeah. One thing to actually go off of here with, like, the actual sorry. I'm basing this off of is the National College Health Assessment. It's not just mental health. It's all kinds of health.
Anish:But with this story, I wanted to focus mainly on mental health because those are the things that when I actually heard about this from the NASMS UGA meeting Yeah. The, director of University Health and Well-being, Alexis Travis, actually gave a presentation about her division because it's fairly new. And that was mainly what I wanted to focus on cause the numbers here were the most alarming that kind of stood out to me.
Alex:I see. This is part of a broader survey.
Anish:Yeah. Part of a broader survey.
Alex:But What are the survey questions specifically about mental health that prompted these concerns?
Anish:Well, mainly they focus on it's not just like, I guess, poor mental health. It's more so, like, when they ask you questions like some of the some of the data was like have you experienced anxiety in the last year or so? It's more so like students can say that because, oh, they have experienced anxiety. It's not a sense of like you've had poor anxiety but another data point that goes more into it is that let's say with it's like have you actually been diagnosed or treated with overall anxiety? So that's more so like a more specific question of it in terms of like students they just experience it.
Anish:They don't necessarily go for treatment. They just experience it and then this random survey that I believe is like around 900 or so students randomly selected.
Alex:Yeah.
Anish:That's who's picked and then it's not just students who are being treated. It's just it's also students who are being affected anxiety and they personally believe so. So it's
Alex:So both people who sort of self diagnose who believe they're experiencing anxiety and people, who are actually, like, diagnosed by a doctor and have, like, had a diagnosis of anxiety.
Anish:Yeah. And I believe the number here is that 29% has affected academic performance. So it's like and also with that, 74% of MC students have been diagnosed. So that's the diagnosis number. It's anxiety and also, I believe, stress as well, but either diagnosed or
Alex:74% have been diagnosed? Or treated.
Anish:Yes. Wow. That's the 20 24 National College Health Assessment, I believe.
Alex:And you said how many are, feel that it's affected their academic work? That was 29%. Almost a third.
Anish:Yeah. To go off of that, this is I don't I'm not certain if it is actually diagnosed and treated or if it's just they believe they have anxiety. But in the last year, moderate to high stress has been cited as 72% by students. So that's a pretty significant number and I feel like one question that I didn't really I didn't really go delve into because it was just a survey. It's just numbers.
Anish:They didn't really you can't really, I guess, base off of the student. You can't define what they believe is moderate to high stress because moderate to high stress is just like for you or me, that could be one thing. For another person, that could be a wholly totally different thing because, like, workloads vary from student to student. Yeah. And with that, it's more so the idea of, like, this is a survey.
Anish:And then actually when students go into these university programs, like, like mental health and trauma support services, like CAPS, like CAPS Connect, all these kinds of mental health services, that's a totally different conversation because you actually have professionals talking to them.
Alex:And so how do those numbers because in a vacuum, that that sounds pretty alarming. Right? I mean, if you have 70 some percent of students that have actually been diagnosed with anxiety and whatnot or been treated for it, but how do those numbers compare, like, to recent years? Is is this sort of the norm at MSU or is this an increasing problem?
Anish:I would say it it is it's it's sort of a thing like, the kind of tone I based off of what I got from all these directors I spoke with is that this is a thing that has been occurring consistently. Mhmm. And it's not just a university problem. It is a problem that's been occurring across all demographics, I guess. That's one thing that I spoke with about an expert.
Anish:Like, this is a problem that just not only affects campus students but the idea of like that they describe is that this is a microcosm. We're in a microcosm of a country. Like Yeah. College campus is a microcosm of all kinds of voices, all kinds of all kinds of demographics, people and it's just we're seeing that reflected in a lot more heightened intensified version of it because we're in a college campus. We see we're so close to people.
Anish:We see all these kinds of voices, all these kinds of issues that are occurring on a national level occur at a campus wide level too Yeah. I guess.
Alex:And then also, on sort of the most extreme end of things, you also got into sort of the suicide rates in recent years on MSU's campus. And those are I mean, tell me about that. You said that they're they're increasing, but we don't know exactly how.
Anish:So what happened was is that one of the main things that doctor Alexis Travis spoke about at this you ASMU GA meeting, just informational, was that suicide rates, they've been measuring them since 2020, and they've measured them for the last 4 years, 2024 being the last year. The last they've been increasing all 4 years, but for the last 2 years, they peaked. And I guess that means they peak last year this year as well. But with that, they've kind of come to this consensus. Okay.
Anish:Well, this is something we need to deal with. This is something we need to actually work on. And I believe, with this, it was the university health and well-being division under this umbrella. They have all these sorts of I think it's 11 different pillars or 11 different 11 different programs or 11 different, like, kind of groupings of campus mental health services. And with the with the mental health and trauma support services division, I believe with, they recently elected a new director, Lee Norwood.
Anish:And that was kind of one of the reasons for her being elected was to head this sort of suicide mortality committee that's working on that's being worked on with Ingham County.
Alex:Because there has been such a high rate in recent years of suicide.
Anish:I believe she was elected or she was actually, appointed a few weeks ago, but she's been kind of involved with, other universities in the past. So she hasn't been an MSC specific person, but she, like, joined MSU because she's she said she worked on other universities on mental health so on mental health services, but not Yeah. At MSU. So now she's kind of this, like, voice that is, I guess, a voice for university mental health, but Yeah. Is helping out with this committee and also just helping out with our mental health and trauma support services division.
Alex:Well, I wanna get I think that's interesting. I wanna get more into that work with, you know, the things that MSU is trying to do to kinda turn the tide on this problem. But first, can you tell me a little bit about you talked to some experts, you know, internally and externally, people even outside of MSU, who told you about just kind of theorizing on why this is happening. What is unique about about this moment, maybe this demographic that's causing, this kind of high rate of mental health issues. Tell me about that.
Alex:I mean, what's causing this?
Anish:Yeah. For sure. So, I believe it's actually an associate professor who works mainly in pediatric psychology, but she also talks to young adults, college students. She focuses on all sorts of, like, I guess student health. And one of the main things is she kind of laid it out.
Anish:It's like it's hard to it's hard to answer because it's more so an idea of like it's always affecting people and it's always affecting people in so many different aspects of their life. It's individual biological, relational, like, societal, community, and and I believe political levels. It's all these sorts of factors loading on you. What you described as it is this imagine you're a student and you have you have these, like, large scale natural and madman disasters you have that are affecting you, I guess, like, either directly or just there in the back of your head. You have civil unrest both on and off campus.
Anish:We've all obviously had a lot of unrest in terms of, like, divestment in terms of just conversations regarding, like, students are not very happy with administration. They're not very happy with
Alex:definitely a lack of institutional trust at MSU. I mean, even going back to to Nassar and then more recently, that's definitely it's I thought about that as connected with student mental health, but not sort of having an institutional grounding.
Anish:It's like you don't really feel safe at your school. You don't really feel like your school respects you in a sense where they don't they don't really treat you they don't treat your voice as an important input in this conversation because we are paying money to be here. We are paying Yeah.
Alex:We are
Anish:paying to be here, and they we should feel like they respect us as well. Like and that's kind of a factor in terms of, like, not just, like, sip one rest, but it's, like, students, not every group feel safe on campus too. Yeah. I can go on that a bit later, but also off those other points. It's like like legal infringements of our bodily autonomy.
Anish:We have an election coming up with that. People don't feel safe. People will feel like their, like, their lives are literally on the ballot. Like, their their autonomy is on the ballot currently, and that's another factor. But all these kinds of things kind of pile up, I guess.
Anish:And she described it as like a cognitive load. It's more or less a thing that's like a background stress in your life. You have all these things that you're dealing with. You have whether it's like political issues, you have civil unrest, you have all these things that don't affect you necessarily on a on a day to day level. But these are issues that affect you in a sense where you're thinking about them.
Anish:You have you're putting mental energy into those topics. And while there's something as as, like, drastic as, like, an election where, like, your bodily autonomy is on the ballot or it's just civil unrest in terms of theirs, divestment protesters, ideas of, like, things you don't agree with that the university is doing or or just like a or you're a marginalized you're part you're you're part of a marginalized community where things are happening to your community on campus. Maybe there's, there are hate incidents or just things that you don't agree with. And that's, that's the thing that doesn't affect you personally, but it's the thing that affects you mentally. And when you're going day to day on classes, you can't really perform 100% academically because of the fact that these are things that are affecting your mental space.
Anish:And that's just one thing that doctor Crystal Cadorna talked about is that cognitive load is just it's one of the main things that affects students because we have we have to use our our brains mentally to perform academically. And if we can't perform academically a 100%, it affects our other mental factors and the account just builds up and it's Yeah. This volume is like the volume gauge is just turning up and up and up. You can't really focus on other things.
Alex:Well, that's fascinating because, you know, when you hear about student mental health, I think especially in, like, sort of uninformed conversations about it, what I expect to hear when I hear student mental health is bad is, people are isolated because of the pandemic. They're on their phones too much on social media and whatnot, and this feels much more existential and political what you're hearing from this expert. I mean, is that pandemic cell phone, social media kind of those tropes, that sort of isolation? I mean, is that, is that a myth? Is that a factor that is like a confounding variable here where it complicates this?
Alex:How does that play in?
Anish:I wouldn't say so. I would say absolutely. It does play a factor. Like, social isolation is very much a thing that was cited by both this expert and also the directors on campus. Like, social isolation is a factor, but it's more so I I imagine in a sense where, like, it's more so effective, like, they don't go out of their way to interact these resources.
Anish:Socialization is there, but it's just one thing that is they they use this wording of that, like, we don't really know. We can't really determine how the effects the the reverberations of the pandemic Yeah. Affect us until, like, years later. We're still studying that. And that's one thing they couldn't go too much into because they honestly don't know.
Alex:It's really less understood than some of these other factors you're talking about.
Anish:These are these are factors that existed that have existed for, I don't know, as long as as long as, like, a civilization has, like, every public going to rest, like, it's always the thing that's gonna be occurring.
Alex:But this unique situation of the pandemic in social media isn't as well understood.
Anish:It isn't. It it but it's just, like and it is a sense of, like, too where, like, it's just one of those cognitive loads. It's one of those background stressors. But at the same time, with those background stressors, like, they affect other things too. Once all those once the volumes turned up, they affect your relationships.
Anish:They affect they affect, your community engagement. They affect all these sorts of other factors that build on top of that. And I guess for the relationships, that does play a factor into social isolation. Well, and it's
Alex:I I think this is interesting too because, what you've talked about thus far, none of this is really MSU stuff. I mean, maybe that institutional betrayal is uniquely bad at MSU just because you have these compounding things of you have students that are very divided on this divestment issue. You have students that are, you know, divided on these kind of broader issues of sexual violence that MSU continues to struggle with since Larry Nassar. But, I mean, trusted institutions, I think, we know is is in question kinda everywhere. That's not even really unique to MSU.
Alex:So what are these kind of campus leaders that you talk to here at the university doing to combat these more kind of existential national problems that aren't the problems aren't necessarily in their control? Are there solutions they feel like are at their disposal to help students navigate that?
Anish:The solutions the the, like, the main solution that they've always gone back to is outreach. Outreach is just the main thing they talk about. It's either holding events. Like, they always they mentioned, like, they held an event recently that was just kind of a more of like a mental health fair in a sense where it's just bring people together on campus to either just have, like, a more, like, social event. And then, like, on top of that, like, accentuate that with speakers and also have people have screeners and just talk about their own mental health.
Anish:But the thing is just outreach is the main issue. Like, that's what they've always been working on and that's what that's what they've always been trying to, I guess, tackle. And with outreach, it's more a sense of, like so 2 years ago to kind of go in a segue here with the university health and well-being division, before that occurred, like, all of these, like, mental health services were kind of disconnected. Like caps caps was disconnected, mental health and trauma support services, that was all disconnected. So imagine all these mental health services are disconnected.
Anish:They can't communicate with each other in an efficient manner. And 2 years ago, they kind of I guess, they restructured. And now there's an umbrella term of with 11 pillars, university health and well-being is the, I guess, the main, like, it's like the pillar.
Alex:Because this is, as I understand it, a new department where they took a bunch of stuff that was housed in other places Mhmm. And put it together under Alexis Travis, under this new leadership. I mean, that that that feels significant to me. Right? That I mean, am I understanding you right that this is like they've created kind of a new centralization where this is like one office, not a bunch of little mental health resources spread across existing things at MSU.
Anish:And the main reason for that was to just integrate service, to have communication where it's like, let's say, a student doesn't really know what they're looking for. And then that way, it's so easily communicable. You can just communicate from one office to another. And it's not a matter of, like, students just looking around. It's it's a lot easier for students to actually find what they needed, like, find the help they need with an integrated system like the University Health and Well-being.
Alex:Could go to University of Wealth Health and Well-being. And under that umbrella, there are a bunch of different services and they can kinda direct you to what's a good fit. Is that sort of the thinking?
Anish:Well, it's I wouldn't say there's like a it's not like an office students can walk into. It's just more it's they describe it as division. It's not a department. It's just a division. But with that, it's like I guess it's more so that, like, with that what I said before, like, the caps director and the mental health and trauma support services director.
Anish:They're they work together on this, like, on this, suicide rates committee. But it's the thing where, like, they're now they're working together. They're they're communicating with each other. It's a matter of communication for us. More so than just more more so than just a student, like, going into a simple building, a universal health well-being.
Anish:Building. Because I don't believe that exists. It's just a division in a sense where it's more of like an organizational administrational thing.
Alex:Yeah. It's not something maybe a student would physically see represented. No. What about though, you know, under this this umbrella with all this communication? I I mean, what are they communicating about?
Alex:Tell me about a couple of the services that they're offering to students that they say are gonna help, you know, people with this crisis.
Anish:Do you mean services, like, in terms of, like, university, like, university services?
Alex:Saying a student could access from the university.
Anish:Yeah. For sure. So, one thing they were discussing is that a new program that CAPS is doing, they do workshops all the time all throughout the semester. Yeah. And CAPS, one thing they that's brand new, I believe, is that's occurring currently right now is the the stop, breathe, check-in program.
Anish:That's mainly to deal with stress. Like, one thing they always talk about is they wanna de stigmatize stress. They wanna de stigmatize anxiety. And then this program is more so a workshop students can sign up for and go to to discuss stress and kind of learn about that through CAPS. And if you with other programs, like, there's also like a CAPS connect program, which is I believe it's a lot shorter.
Anish:It's just kind of like a in and out. Like, you don't have to go continually. It's not like with CAPS, it's like you have to sign up for that. You have to you you're like you're you're, assigned like an instructor. You're assigned like a not instructor.
Anish:You're assigned like a a counselor, I guess. With CAPS Connect, it's more so you just go in and out. Like, if you go have a problem, you go there very like a short term, I guess. Yeah. But in terms of other services, it's more so it's not really they're introducing new services.
Anish:It's just a sense of, like, the way these services, like, work together is a lot different now. It's like they're all interconnected in the sense that they're not just they're not, like, they're not operating at their own individual capacities and, like, individual silos is what the word she used. They're operating on a sense where it's like they're working together. They're, like, communicating, like, okay. How do we do this?
Anish:Like, when they solve when they have issues and then they're working on issues like like, like improving suicide rates and, like, mental health services. Like, they communicate to solve these issues. It's not just a sense of, like, they're working to they're working independently. They're working together, I guess. So
Alex:What about is there kind of, like, any sort of, like, finish line or check-in point where they will do a similar assessment again? I mean, this server that you talked about, does it happen on a regular basis where there's a time people can revisit and say, is what MSU is doing working? Is this getting better?
Anish:It happens every 2 years. I believe it's MSU. And, Chromie on the website, I can't I haven't been able to access that 20 24 data. Like, I have data, like, specific bullet points from Alexis Travis, but in terms of, like, an actual The full survey. The full survey, it's not accessible online.
Alex:But But then so, I guess, presumably, in 2026, there'll be another one of these surveys. And we might see if, you know, kind of the tide has changed.
Anish:Yeah. For example, like, the one on the website currently right now, that doesn't I assume it doesn't update it because it's been so recent. It's the 2022 one. You can read through the whole thing. It's around, like, a 100 pages, and it just it doesn't cover just mental health.
Anish:Like I said before, it covers any any and all aspects of student health.
Alex:Yeah. Well, I'll be excited to see in 2026 what progress, you know, they've made, hopefully.
Anish:You won't
Alex:be here. I think you'll have just graduated when that comes out, sadly. But someone, a new hungry, young reporter like Anish will be all over it, maybe on the 19 09. Hope so. Yeah.
Alex:Yeah. Well, thank you for coming on the show. It's great to have you. That's all for now, but we'll be back next week with fresh reporting from the great minds here at the state news. Until then, Nisha's story that we talked about and all of his coverage of student, student affairs, ASMC student government, clubs, advocacy, you could find that on state news.com.
Alex:Thank you to my guest, Nisha, again, for coming on, our podcast coordinator, Taylor. And most of all, thank you for listening. For the 19:09, I'm Alex Walters.