How much strain are today’s young people feeling? Quite a bit, unfortunately. National statistics say rates of depression and anxiety have soared, while closer to home, admissions officers revealed that one in three applicants to Marquette this year referred to mental health struggles in their personal essays.
Dr. Gabriel Velez, associate professor of educational policy and leadership, and Dr. Nakia Gordon, associate professor of psychology. Illustrations by Jaya Nicely.
As parents, educators and students themselves have searched for answers, Dr. Jonathan Haidt, a New York University ethics professor, struck a chord with his book, The Anxious Generation, which argues the rise in mental health struggles is closely tied to soaring rates of smartphone and social media use in youth. With others citing the lingering effects of the pandemic and other causes, Marquette reached out to two faculty members from different disciplines — both known for their work on student mental health and wellness — for their opinions and thoughts on how to respond to this crisis.
How concerned are you about the mental health of today’s high school and college students?
Nakia Gordon: I think we have all seen more mental health issues, especially since the pandemic, but it may have started a little before that. And I don’t think that we’ve gotten back to some earlier baseline. Especially at Marquette, you see students reporting in everyday conversations that they’re overwhelmed with stress and anxiety. I feel like a bright side is that the younger generation talks about their struggles more openly. Whether or not there are issues to consider with self-diagnoses and the social aspect of talking about mental health, I do appreciate that it is something they can now talk about and search for services or support even from friends.
Gabriel Velez: What Nakia said really resonates. With these questions, there’s the data, and we can see numbers that show this is real. And then there’s the lived experience of that. When you talk to folks at Marquette who have been around for a while, to high school educators and to parents, the moment you bring up young people and mental health, everyone has an experience of knowing someone who is struggling. It feels like it’s everywhere. Nakia really hit it on the head too, that young people are certainly experiencing this in different ways. They’re also able to talk about it a little more openly and advocate for themselves. That’s powerful. It’s a bit of a strength amidst the growing numbers who are struggling.
Screen time and social media have been mentioned as possible causes of this trend. Which factors most concern you?
GV: Because this is such an acute and deeply felt concern for so many people, I think a lot of people are looking for the silver bullet. The Anxious Generation really resonated with people and it allows us to point to a couple of concrete things and say: It’s social media and smartphones, right? But in considering what this generation is facing, I think there’s a lot more depth and complexity in there. I’d throw in some other factors as contributing. Economic uncertainty and climate change add some underlying layers. There’s political discord and uncertainty too.
And as Nakia mentioned, I think the pandemic is a part of this, but it’s not everything. Sometimes people say these struggles are because of smartphones and leave the pandemic out of it. …Or people say it’s just the pandemic that disrupted things for all young people, and now we’re struggling with that. I think we need to be willing to say it’s a lot of things and it can look different for individual youth.
NG: Uncertainty was the word that popped into my mind and Gabe used it in a couple of ways. I think about college students and the students in high school now, and I feel the landscape has been shifting. For my generation, people were celebrating that you might go to college and get a well-paying job. But the language in our country has shifted away from that, which leaves a lot of current students or those considering college uncertain about whether that is a path that will be fruitful. So, I think trying to figure out what this shifting landscape means for them is something that contributes to that sense of, “Where do I go from here?”
How has Marquette responded to this challenge?
NG: Dr. Alyson Gerdes and I have been leading a wellness program for Marquette undergraduate and graduate students for the last three years. We meet in small groups of about six or eight for six weeks, once a week. We’ve had a chance to hear how students think, to hear them explore some of our wellness strategies and what might be barriers to them. I see students semesters afterward, and they are still keeping up with some of the strategies.
And then, we also hear other things — that are not even about being a student — that serve as barriers to wellness. And some of it is just basic human stuff that people struggle with. For instance, one wellness module is self-compassion — the ability to think positively and appreciate things about yourself. At the start of this work, I had no idea it would be something that people really struggled with. It’s not clear whether this is because of social media or the “shifting landscape.” It may just be a human thing that people have not learned to do consistently.
GV: If we didn’t have Nakia here, I was going to say the work she is doing is a good example, and we need to bring her into the conversation. But two other interconnected efforts immediately come to mind. One is the university’s emphasis on student success. When you look at a lot of literature on student success, we measure it with numbers such as retention and graduation rates. But a number — 96 versus 98 percent — hides what’s going on in students’ lives. And as I’ve talked to some folks who have been a part of the Student Success Initiative, there’s recognition that this involves a deeper sense of student well-being. Part of the need is academic support, but it’s also recognizing that well-being is a big challenge a lot of young people face that determines their success in higher education.
That ties into the other point: our new (Wellness + Helfaer Recreation) complex that sits right across from us here in Schroeder Complex. To bring together physical and other types of wellness supports is powerful. It was eye-opening for me to see those elements together on a college campus. That speaks to the university’s commitment. When you spend that much money on a building, and you’re saying, “this is about a holistic perspective on wellness,” I do think that both offers concrete resources to students — it brings them together in a way that’s effective — and it sends that message that we care about this.
NG: I had the opportunity to be involved in the Student Success Initiative in its early planning stages, before we had a student success center. That was a reminder: Whenever I am in collaboration with administrators, staff and other faculty, that’s when I feel most encouraged about Marquette. It’s because of the people around the table with me. It’s being at the table and hearing how much our community cares about students and the multifaceted way that we think about that. To Gabe’s point, it’s more than just mental health. The program that Alyson and I have involves whole person wellness. We have a nutrition model. We have a physical model. We think about the whole person. Now, the recreation and wellness center is really trying to bring those ideas into one place. And I would say the Lemonis Center for Student Success is another place where the people developing it were very thoughtful. They asked questions such as: How do we create spaces for rest? I don’t think students appreciate that they need rest. So how do we create spaces that are comfortable for rest, for gathering? And dare I say, I’ll use this buzzword, places for belonging? I feel like Gabe was hinting at that sense of belonging too. So it’s not just, how are you on these metrics, but do you feel like you have a home and a space?
What are changes beyond Marquette that could help the situation, maybe even things that families can do as they look at the younger people in their lives?
GV: The first thing I would say is this is probably the part that readers are going to jump right to and be really excited about, because a lot of us are educators, parents and folks who just work with young people and are looking for answers. I would go back to what Nakia was saying early on. I think it can’t be the answer to everything, but really giving young people the space to talk about this and trying to create the relationships where they feel comfortable talking and sharing about this is really key. Let’s say I have a student in my class, and I’m concerned about something with them. I can take all the things I know — the data, the things I read — and I can say, “Oh, maybe you need to be doing this.” But if I don’t really understand what’s actually going on with this student, and I don’t give them the space to feel comfortable, to talk and share about that, even that first step could be misguided. And it could create greater issues or harms. So, I think really doubling down on relationship building is important. To what Nakia said before about belonging being a key question, that sense of connection is also an underlying theme here with a lot of what we’re seeing with young people. If you start with trying to build relationships and really working on that, I think you’re doing a lot of the work already. It’s from that connection that you can start to see what’s the correct resource or the thing that this young person is expressing to me and what they need.
NG: I like this idea of modeling. There’s an organization, Sky Schools, that Gabe is familiar with. And their model is you teach instructors how to regulate themselves first. They are then better able to support students from a regulated place. And, Gabe, I hear that’s what you’re saying — first listen to understand, and then maybe you arrive at a solution, or maybe you just keep listening. So, this idea of us starting with ourselves (as supporters) and learning how to regulate and listen and focus on that first, because I do think it makes a difference. I think about young people whom I am familiar with, and seeing them play that role for their friends, for their cohort. They are able to have these conversations with their near peers, people who are listening. Then, if they have concrete solutions, they can absolutely offer them. I’ll give one other example. I had a student, one of my advisees, who was just really going through a difficult time. And I said, “We can meet however long you need to meet.” We met a couple of times, and based on my experience, it didn’t look like we were making any kind of concrete changes. So, I asked: “Do you still want to do this? And he said, “Yes. There is just something good in being able to come here and know that this is a space where someone is listening.”
