Univ. creates mental health task force

The University announced on Tuesday the creation of the Task Force on Mental Health and Well-Being, an initiative to analyze and improve well-being on campus.

“We have a broad view of what this task force is about,” Provost Robert C. Lieberman, who announced the task force with University President Ronald J. Daniels, said. “It’s part of an overall emphasis on supporting healthy choices and healthy lives of our students.”

The task force will be co-chaired by Dean of Student Life Terry Martinez and Daniele Fallin, chair of the Department of Mental Health at the Bloomberg School of Public Health. Students, faculty and staff will also participate in the task force.

“The goal of the task force is to ensure that the university’s programs, policies, and practices regarding student psychological well-being reflect the current state of scientific knowledge and national best practices to meet the diverse needs of our students,” the email announcement stated.

The task force will begin meeting in March, and aims to publish a report in December 2016.

Lieberman said that the administration has been discussing ways to improve mental health and well-being on campus. This conversation gained significant momentum this fall after former SGA Executive President Jason Plush resigned from his post citing mental health difficulties, and the Black Student Union (BSU) advocated for more mental health resources focusing on students of color.

The task force will look at resources offered on campus and determine whether they are meeting student needs, as well as locate other places where mental health can be improved and evaluate the environment on campus.

“How do we best understand what the sources of stress are and what can we do to alleviate those sources? We can’t make your problem sets any easier,” Lieberman said.

The ultimate goal is to create an implementable set of plans to fight for better mental health support on campus.

“This is Johns Hopkins, and we are as a University devoted to mobilizing understanding and knowledge and expertise to solve problems,” Lieberman said. “So we’re gonna use our own native expertise to help drive the task force.”

Lieberman recognized the intensity of the competition at Hopkins.

“This is an intense place, like our peer institutions. The students and faculty are not here because they want to have a relaxing time. We’re about serious things. People work hard. People worked hard to get here. They’re ambitious,” Lieberman said.

He emphasized the need to prevent students from becoming overwhelmed.

“We want to make sure that we have support in place so people are able to work their way through the intensity, to achieve their goals without having their lives completely overtaken,” he said. “And that’s a challenge. And there’s no one on this campus who hasn’t had moments of challenge. We want this to be a place where people can manage their work lives with other aspects of their lives. All of those things are on the table for this. If we’re driving people to the Counseling Center, we haven’t done half our job, which is to help people cope with the demands of being a Hopkins student.”

Jack Bartholet, executive president of the Student Government Association (SGA), discussed SGA’s integral involvement in creating the task force.

“Mental health is a topic that’s been really important to the SGA throughout the course of this year and in general,” Bartholet said. “Obviously, when our president [Jason Plush] stepped down for mental health reasons, that was a big wake-up call to us.”

Batholet stressed the need to eliminate the stigma that seeking help for mental health struggles can bring.

“We had noticed that many, many students at this campus feel extraordinarily stressed. Many utilize the Counseling Center services,” he said. “Many feel almost a sense of stigma in utilizing counseling services.”

Bartholet mentioned several factors affecting stress levels on campus, including the academic calendar, financial aid, class scheduling and grade deflation. Bartholet feels that the University has only provided resources for individual cases rather than trying to address the systemic, structural problems.

“We wanted to make sure that when we raise these concerns, it doesn’t fall on deaf ears, and they don’t say we need to add more counselors... We need to add more money,” Bartholet said.

As the SGA was thinking about how to approach mental health and well-being on campus, so was Martinez.

“I don’t want it to seem like the SGA woke the administration up,” Bartholet said.

Lieberman also addressed the discussion between the SGA and the administration. He mentioned Plush’s decision to step down. Lieberman said that Plush’s action was a courageous public declaration that propelled mental health into the public spotlight.

A initial concern SGA had about the task force was its University-wide mandate.

“There’s a stark contrast between a third year medical student and a freshman arts and science student,” he said.

The administration has tried to assuage these concerns by ensuring that each group would be carefully considered.

Bartholet said that SGA was ready to address mental health on campus more aggressively.

“The people on SGA are really excited. The people who were privy to the knowledge beforehand are excited... I think students are generally very excited to see the administration and SGA engaging on the topic of mental health,” he said.

Sophomore Serena Frechter gave her opinion on the formation of the task force.

“I think it’s good that they’re doing it, but I also question how useful task forces are going to be,” Frechter said. “And it also seems that it’s kind of late in the game to be doing it.”

Sophomore Lindsey Cohen wrote about the state of mental health on campus.

“I’d say that overall it is the norm here to be stressed out... and sometimes when a student has a down week because everyone else is stressed, students think they should be doing more,” Cohen wrote in an email to The News-Letter. “So, on a whole, mental health on campus is quite poor and it’s perpetuated by everyone on campus.”

Plush reflected on the task force in the wake of his stepping down as SGA executive president.

“I’m excited that the Mental Health Task Force is finally being formed. I know that the SGA has been hard at work finding potential candidates to serve on the task force. The task force is an initiative that we started working on before I stepped down in October and it’s wonderful to see that it’s finally coming to fruition,” he wrote in an email to The News-Letter.

“I look forward to seeing what the task force can accomplish. Mental health is a tremendous issue affecting students across all college campuses and it is my hope that the establishment of this Task Force is the start of a more positive trend at Hopkins in helping students find and receive the necessary help to deal with these issues.”