MentalHealthEdu: Utilizing Education to Erase Stigma

Sara Miller, Elizabeth Sogunle, Jaime Park

Table of Contents
Identifying Challenges and Opportunities 3

Generating Insights from Empathy Research 5

Synthesizing Empathy Research 7

Brainstorming Ideas 9

Building, Testing, & Learning 12

Drawing Conclusions and Making Recommendations 14

Identifying Challenges and Opportunities

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 When one thinks about getting help for sickness, most people think about physical

illnesses such as fevers or the flu. Most people wouldnt have mental illnesses come to mind, and

this isnt just by mere chance. Mental health on college campuses is a major issue that is often

overlooked. Mentalhealth.gov defines mental health as a state of emotional, psychological, and

social well-being. It impacts every aspect of our lives like how we handle stress, the interactions

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

present throughout all stages of growth (childhood and adolescence throughout adulthood).

During college, a person is under constant stress from classes and extracurriculars and often

during these times, 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 in our

community. For many students, being at college is the first time being away from home and

being alone. Furthermore, during this period many students feel a sense of overwhelming

pressure to do well in their courses to the point where healthy decisions are not made. This

consequently impacts the physiological health of a person but perhaps more importantly, the

mental health of said person. 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 identified the health problem as students are not seeking the help for mental

health as they should, we were able to find different aspects that are associated with the problem.

We found that there were three main viewpoints: students who did find mental health important,

those who didn't have the knowledge of resources here on campus, and those who believed there

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is a lack of adequate resources on campus. Through the interviews that were conducted, we also

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 so that all students could get educated on what

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

also found that other students knew about mental health, but they were not entirely aware about

the resources that are available here on campus. According to a 2012 survey on mental health on

college campuses conducted by NAMI (National Alliance on Mental Illness) one of the top five

reasons students found their schools unsupportive was that the schools did not educate faculty

and students, allowing stigma to persist. Another reason was that campus services were not

publicized well colleges (Gruttadaro and Crudo 19). Here at the University of Maryland, there

are several resources that are available through the health center and due to the lack of

knowledge, students cannot effectively utilize 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 to support students.

Challenges Opportunities

Students do not believe mental health is Improve student mental health

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

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 To conduct our research, we decided that we were going to approach our 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. These interviews served to give us information and different perspectives on what

students at UMD thought of mental health, and what they knew about the resources.

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

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

students. We hoped to learn what was important to the user and how they felt about the current

state of mental health on college campus. We also hoped to learn students personal stories in

order to gain an understanding of the effect that this issue had on a personal and emotional level.

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. She realized this solely because of being apart of a sub-organization in OMES; otherwise

she would not have been able to find a way to schedule an intake appointment as soon as

possible. 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. The benefits of a faster intake appointment or other means and resources to receive

help was some of the pertinent information that allowed our group to brainstorm ideas. The

problems Sherry talked about highlights what we focused on due to this part of our empathy

research.

Sherry knew about different resources that are available on campus 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 Michael for privacy purposes) and he stated that

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

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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 knows had experienced mental health

illnesses. Thus, he lacked an understanding of what mental health is and the 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 member here at the university, specifically a

Resident Director (she 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. When students were asked to rate campus mental health services on

campus, the number one request from students was to educate faculty and staff to raise

awareness on mental health issues (Grasgreen 1). 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.

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.

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Our interviews solidified our focus on developing ways of involving and educating students, and

the whole campus on mental health.

Unless its 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.

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Activity: Grouping keywords based on interview. This activity allowed us to gather our thoughts
from each interview, and identify which keywords were the most important and similar amongst
the various interviews.

Brainstorming 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 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

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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.

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Activity: Grouping keywords based on relevance

Activity: Main Insights

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 Activity: Potential prototypes grouped by User Happiness, Feasibility, and Biggest
Breakthrough

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,

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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 and stress its importance to the user.

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Drawing Conclusions and Making Recommendations

When students first enter universities, particularly large ones, there are a number of

adjustments that must be made. Living away from home, rooming with strangers, and having

classes with students that have similar academic strengths are just some of the many factors of a

students life that is affected once going away to college. With the increased amount of stressors,

its not unusual for incoming students to experience changes concerning their mental health.

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. We

believed it was due to stigma, a set of negative and often unfair beliefs that society has about

something. Upon conducting our empathy research, we found that many students were simply

unaware of their symptoms and warning signs. Thus, mental health issues can be among the

health problems that go largely undetected. For students who were aware of possible mental

health illnesses such as depression and anxiety, we learned that some were hesitant to seek help

due to the stigma surrounding mental health. Not seeking help could lead to higher risks of self-

harming habits and possibly more serious consequences.

To help erase the stigma surrounding mental health in the UMD community, our group

utilized empathy research techniques to brainstorm and narrow ideas down to one solution:

MentalHealthEdu. It was inspired by the AlcoholEdu program that the group members had to

take as freshmen. AlcoholEdu was an educational tool mandated by the administration to educate

incoming freshmen about the implications of partaking in activities involving alcohol. Likewise,

MentalHealthEdu will serve to educate incoming freshmen about general mental health

information, mental health illnesses, and credible resources available on campus. From here, our

team would need to go speak with the administration, the Counseling Center, and the Health

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Center to figure out how we would implement this into the incoming freshmens tasks and to

ensure the information that is in the program is correct and presented in an appropriate manner.

We also would need to hire a company or several people who would be able to bring our vision

for MentalHealthEdu to reality.

The significance of this solution essentially stems from the fact that it will promote

awareness and educate students on mental health. Exposure on these topics, which are normally

not talked about, will allow students to be more aware and understanding of themselves and

others. As a result, we are hoping that the stigma around mental health will disappear which will

lead to students who are more open to receive help for mental health as they would for physical

injuries. Truly, the stigma surrounding mental health can only be erased when one becomes

properly educated; with the implementation of MentalHealthEdu, we hope to do just that.

Sources

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Gruttadaro, Darcy, and Dana Crudo. "COLLEGE STUDENTS SPEAK A SURVEY REPORT

ON MENTAL HEALTH ." NAMI, 2012. Web.

Grasgreen, Allie. "Students Rate Mental Health Services." Inside Higher ED, 30 Oct. 2012. Web.

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