Mental Health EDU

Sara M., Elizabeth S., Jaime P

Table of contents:

Section One: Challenges and Opportunities pg 3

Section Two: Insights from Empathy Research pg 5

Section Three: Synthesizing Empathy Research pg 7

Section Four: Brainstorming and Generating Ideas pg 8

Section Five: Building, Testing, Learning pg 10

Section Six: Drawing Conclusions and Making Recommendations pg 11

Section One: Challenges and Opportunities

Mental health on college campus is a major issue that is often overlooked.

Mentalhealth.gov, defines mental health as a state of emotional, psychological, and social well-

being. Mental health impacts every aspect of our lives, from how we handle stress, the

interactions we have with people, and simply how we make decisions. It is an aspect of our life

that is important without the life course of a person (childhood and adolescence throughout

adulthood). During college, a person is under constant stress from classes and extracellular and

most times during this time, students forget to pay attention to their mental wellness. After

conducting our Empathy Research here at the University of Maryland, we found that students,

faculty, and administration need to do more in order to improve the overall mental health

wellness here at the university. For many students, being at college is the first time being away

from home and being alone. Not only that, but during this period many students feel a sense of

pressure to do well in their courses that healthy decisions are not made. This consequently

impacts the biological health of a person and also the mental health. Through interviewing

students, we were able to see what causes mental health illness and breakdowns here on our

campus. Due to the lack of adequate resources for the population of the university, this gives

students a lack of knowledge and techniques to deal with mental health illnesses.
 Once we were able to identify the problem, we were able to find challenges that are

associated with the problem. We found that there were three categories of students: students who

did find mental health important, those who didn't have the knowledge of resources here on

campus, and lack of adequate resources on campus. Through the interviews that was conducted,

we found that some students do not feel as though mental health is an issue here on this campus

due to not seeing mental health problems in their friend groups. This highlights the lack of

knowledge that students have on mental health concerns that's occurring here on campus.

Through this, we found that providing a way that all students will get educated on what mental

health is and the different shapes it can take was important. Through our research, we also found

that others students knew about mental health, but they were not entirely educated about the

resources that are available here on campus to take advantage of. Here at the University of

Maryland, there are many resources that are available through the health centre and due to the

lack of knowledge, students can not capitalize off of the resources. Lastly, through our research,

it was also found that other students know about the resources on campus and have identified or

been diagnosed with a mental health illness, but there is not an adequate amount of resources on

campus in order to support students.

Challenges Opportunities

Students do not Improve student

believe mental health mental health
is important Increase education
There is a lack of mental health and
of adequate education mental health challenges
that informs students on campus
about mental health Improve the
The university overall academic
does not have enough experience and
resources to host the performance of students
 thousands of students

Section Two: Insights from Empathy Research

In order to conduct our research, we decided that we were going to approach interviews through

the use of empathy research. This approach allowed us to understand and analyze how our

participants feel, say, think, and do. There were many similarities that were present with our

participants, but each one provided us with information that was needed to create a solution to

our highlighted problem. A consistent theme that was present with our participants included that

there needs to be the education of all students at the university. We found that there were students

who either didn't understand what mental health is, what resources are present here at the

university, or didn't know what mental health issues are present here at the university.

After discovering the opportunity to help fellow university students through mental

health awareness, we reached out to several stakeholders: college students, a resident hall

director, and student athletes. At the beginning of our research, we made sure to approach these

interviews in a way that would allow us to retrieve as much information as possible without

being overly invasive. As our health problem requires more personal information that some

people may not be comfortable with disclosing, it was pertinent for us to use empathy research

strategies to allow strangers and friends to divulge any information that could be useful to us

during our research. By conducting interviews that seemed more like a conversation rather than

for research, it made our data and stakeholder insights more personal and more likely to generate

user delight.
 Our group interviewed several people each, where we gathered insights on our potential

health problem. Many of these insights overlapped among the different interviewees, but there

were also varying opinions on the importance of mental health, particularly among the student

athletes. These interviews allowed us to narrow down possible areas where improvement is

needed the most, or where our focus and attention would be the most beneficial for all UMD

students. When a college student was interviewed (she will be named Sherry for privacy

purposes), she said that when she wanted to make an appointment at the Counseling Center to

cope with her grandfathers death, she was told she would need to wait three weeks to have her

intake appointment. For her, this grief from her grandfathers death was not something that could

be put off for three weeks. Luckily, she found a way to get past the three weeks wait through the

Office of Multi-Ethnic Student Education (OMES) and got an appointment with a counselor the

next day. Sherry realized that while she was fortunate to get an appointment, there are students

who may have more pressing issues but are still not able to go to an intake appointment until

much later. This highlights one of the problems we focused on due to our empathy research.

Sherry knew about different resources that are available on campus in order to go about

receiving the help which she needed to receive. Through our research, we found that there are

students who simply do not know what mental health is and the different forms that it can take.

Another student was interviewed (he will be named Micheal for privacy purposes) and he stated

that mental health was not important on college campuses. Through our discussion with him, it

was noted that due to his friend group he did not understand mental health. Due to his friend

group, family, and simply his experience, no one he know had experienced mental health

illnesses. Due to this, he lacked an understanding of what mental health is and resources that are

available. He stated that mental health was not important and simply not be funded. This was
alarming to us and stressed the importance of educating the university about mental health

illnesses and problems on campus.

We were also able to interview a faculty here at the university, she will be called Rachel

(he will be named Rachel for privacy purposes). Through this interview, we were able to see

what the university is doing in order to combat mental health illness and treat the illnesses that

are present at the university. Rachel discussed with us that mental health illness and problems are

not just increasing here at the University of Maryland, but throughout different universities in the

United States. We discussed different situations that the faculty personnel has experienced with

students. Through this, we were able to look at more of what problems are present, that

aggravates the mental health situation here on this campus. We found consistent themes with

responses that students provided to show what the problem is.

Section Three: Synthesizing Empathy Research

Overall, our empathy research confirmed our original point of view statement that

College students need a way to learn more about mental health because there is a lack of

resources and knowledge of mental health resources among students and the educational

methods employed are generally ineffective. Through our interviews, we discovered a general

lack of understanding of mental health among students. Simultaneously, there was also a lack of

availability of resources. Our interviews solidified our focus on developing ways of involving

and educating students, and the whole campus on mental health.

Unless a component of their studies, students do not receive formal mental health

information and the information that is available is not distributed in a memorable way. Students

may not see mental health as playing an important part in their lives and are likely to overlook
conditions as not serious or unimportant. This phenomenon is dangerous among the rise in stress

and mental health complications on campus.

By synthesizing our research, we were able to gain a clearer picture of the issue of mental

health on campus. By speaking to students, we focused in on the educational aspect. Specifically

we wanted to create an engaging and interactive way for all students on campus to learn about

mental health and campus resources. Not only would this reduce uncertainty and confusion over

campus resources, but also make mental a tangible conversation point for students and reduce the

stigmatization that surrounds discussing such issues. We

Section Four: Brainstorming and Generating Ideas

Through the empathy resource, we decided that we wanted to focus on education of the student

body versus campaigning for better administrative action. When coming up with possible

solutions we chose to focus on ways to bring awareness and educate the student body on mental

health in an effort to reduce stigma. Through our interviews, a main theme that we found that a

major theme with all the interviews was that there was a lack of education that was present in

some shape. Through the interviews, we began to ask ourselves how might we questions. For

example, we began to ask ourselves, how might we bridge the gap that is present with

administration, faculty, and students? We also asked ourselves how might we illustrate to

students the importance of mental illness on campus? Through this question, we were able to

formulate our overarching question which was how might we find ways to effectively educate

the student body?

Through this question, we were able to take the question and synthesize the information

which we collected during our research to develop potential ideas to combat the problem. We

found this question to be important due to the fact that due to the lack of education on mental
health, students do not know when they should ask for help. Not only that, but due to the size of

the university, resources get lost and students are not fully aware of the resources that are

available to them on campus. When thinking about ideas on how to combat this problem, we

thought about ways to make information accessible and easier for students. Not only that, but we

also thought about how we could standardize this education experience for all student, even

make it mandatory for all students to participate. In order to do this, we thought about an

education system, that will connect the information that the school has to the students. This will

be a system similar to that of alcohol.edu, but will be known has mentalhealth.edu.

Section 5: Building, Testing, Learning

 Our first decision when creating mental health edu was what topics to include. We knew

we had to cover the basics of mental health and their symptoms. We also knew we had to find a

way to test its effectiveness and how the user felt about the product. Finally, we had to include a

practical and interactive portion in order to engage and amuse the user.

For the practical information we decided on three sections. The first section would detail

common mental illnesses and conditions that affect college students. We decided to include

information on anxiety, depression, post traumatic stress disorder, eating disorders, alcoholism,

substance abuse, obsessive compulsive disorder, ADHD, and ADD. For each, users would

receive a list of symptoms and treatment available for each disorder. In order to engage the user,

and insure that the user learned the information, a matching game of disorder to symptom would

be included at the end and required to pass to move on to other sections like a checkpoint. The

next informational section would focus on recognizes mental health conditions in friend and

acquaintances and how to help. The majority of the information presented in this section would

be by reading a situation, selecting a multiple choice response regarding course of action, and

then receive feedback on their choice. The final section of information would include campus

resources for mental health. The interactive component could be a multiple choice quiz or

matching game.

` In order to test the effectiveness of the program , we decided to use a pre and post quiz. A

pre quiz would be presented to students before going through the program and the score would

be calculated. After completing the final section, the same quiz would be presented again to see

if there was any change in score. The post quiz would also serve as a checkpoint as those who

score underneath a threshold score would not be able to pass the program.
 To pull the program together, we also put in an overview of the program before starting

the prototype . In this overview we detail the purpose and goals of the program such as to inform

students about mental health in college students and campus resources for students to use. We

would also include statistics such as how many college students have mental illnesses, how many

are diagnosed, and the proportion that seek help. This would add an emotional appeal to the

whole project.

Drawing Conclusions and Making Recommendations

The team initially wanted to find a way to help students get better access to mental health

services because it seemed as if students dont make use of them or arent aware of them. Upon

conducting our empathy research, we found that many students were simply unaware of their

symptoms and the warning signs. Due to this, mental health issues can be amongst the health

problems that go larely undetected.

To help solve the problem, our group utilized empathy research techniques to brainstorm

and narrow ideas down to one solution: mental health edu. The importance of this essentially

stems from the fact that it will promote awareness, which leads to education, understanding, and

less stigma.