Ella Snyder, a first-year student at Boston College from fall 2020, recalls feeling isolated. She was also anxious about new COVID-19 safety restrictions.
She says, “I was very concerned about how I would make friends and also have to deal with social distance.” It was almost like I was trying find the impossible balance.
Snyder was walking across campus when he saw a flyer advertising Lean on Me. This peer support network hosts confidential online conversations with students who have completed about 30 hours of training including crisis protocols.
Snyder signed up and sent a message to a peer. According to Snyder, the conversation helped her deal with anxiety.
She says, “It was really nice to have mine validated.” “I felt bad for asking questions about COVID concerns. While you do want to spread the pandemic virus and not spread it, it also takes a toll upon your mental health.”
A national crisis of anxiety and isolation has hit young people particularly hard during the pandemic. A new survey found that nearly half of college students believe pandemic disruptions made it more likely they would seek peer counseling. Snyder was the exception, with 20% saying it made them “much more probable.”
More than 2,000 college students were surveyed by the Mary Christie Institute and Lady Gaga’s Born This Way Foundation last fall. Two-thirds of them said that they have experienced a mental health problem in the past year. One fifth of college students have received peer counseling.
Zoe Ragouzeos is president of Mary Christie Institute. “Students need support from their peers.” Colleges are keen to offer that support, especially in a time where college mental health professionals are reporting high levels of burnout and overloaded workloads.
Ragouzeos cautions that peer counselors may not be able to handle crisis situations in the same way as clinicians. The survey revealed that 16% of student counselors didn’t know about emergency procedures in case they became concerned for the safety of another student.
Ragouzeos identifies the most concerning finding among all the findings.
Peer counselors cannot replace campus mental health professionals
Snyder, 19 years old, has switched from Boston College’s peer counseling program to Lean On Me. She said that she had many conversations with students about the impact of the pandemic on college life, particularly during the omicron-driven cases surge.
She explains that it was a difficult time transitioning from in-person classes to online classes and then a mixture of online and in person this year. “So that brought up many different elements of change that students weren’t ready for,” she said.
Lean On Me student leaders claim that the number of students who seek peer support has increased during the pandemic. Last fall, the number of text messages in which students express suicidal thoughts and self-harm has increased.
Peer counselors at Lean On Me have been trained in campus protocol, risk assessment and on-and off-campus resources. Their training continues throughout their service. The network connects students to professionals or hotlines if they reach out to the network when they are in crisis.
However, the survey found that not all peer counselors can deal with students in crisis.
Ragouzeos states, “It is imperative that students be uniformly trained.” We want them to be able to recognize when they’re in a high-risk environment. These programs must be managed on campus by counseling centers. They are able to respond to students who seem to be in urgent need of support.
Campus mental health counselors are in agreement.
Matthew Barry, an assistant director for community and counseling at Worcester Polytechnic Institute, says that “we can’t outsource the work to students who haven’t been trained in it.”
The school has 350 peer counselors who are trained to help its over 7,000 students in central Massachusetts. However, Barry says the school is still experiencing a mental crisis following the deaths of seven students since July 2021.
Barry chokes up and says that it’s been a difficult year. There’s a lot to be grieved. We are trying to help people who are in pain.
WPI administrators have pledged to increase mental health resources and peer support in the future. Barry is a counselor at WPI and recruits about 100 students annually for a support network which, like Lean On Me refers crisis situations directly to a hotline in the community.
Although he believes there is a high demand for mental health services, he feels that WPI could do more to raise awareness and help students to seek it out.
“Can we do better at putting it out there so people can see it, digest it, and then take it all in?
It is now easier to get help
Ella Snyder, Boston College, says that her volunteer work is now more meaningful because a friend, who was a student at another college, committed suicide this summer.
“Whenever I have a conversation with someone, I try to remember that if something like this existed at his school he wouldn’t be afraid to ask for help because it’s so simple and confidential.”
