Healthy Minds Study Results

In August 2021, Willamette University officially joined the JED Campus Initiative, a 4-year evidence based program designed to cultivate a campus community that fosters emotional wellness and works towards suicide prevention.

The JED Campus Committee at Willamette University has been following the JED Campus strategic timeline and the JED Foundation’s Comprehensive Suicide Prevention framework. This comprehensive approach contains several key components that include;

• developing life skills, promoting social connectedness,
• identifying students at risk,
• increasing help seeking behavior,
• providing mental health & substance abuse services,
• following crisis management procedures,
• restricting access to potentially lethal means and
• building a strategic plan that addresses each of these components.

Several assessments were implemented to better understand Willamette’s current scope of services and resources, and students’ experiences with mental health, in general. This process included three important benchmarks:

• A comprehensive self assessment
• Administration of the Healthy Minds Study in November, 2021,
• A campus visit from our JED Foundation Campus Partners in March, 2022, that included interviews with several campus constituents and student focus groups.

Healthy Minds Study

The Healthy Minds Study (HMS) collects information about the mental health and wellbeing of
college students utilizing validated psychometric tools. The instrument provides insights into
the experiences of respondents in the areas of:

• anxiety,
• depression,
• eating disorders,
• loneliness,
• suicidality, and
• self-injurious behavior.

Willamette University’s HMS was conducted during the month of November, 2021, with a 37% response rate.

Important Takeaways

• The results are consistent with the experiences of our student CARE teams, faculty and staff partners, and staff in Bishop Wellness Center.
• The outcomes are aligned with what is being reported by our peer institutions.
• We have good representation across most demographics and identities (but note that “good representation” does not mean the results are clearly “representative,” as explained below).
• There are several reasons for optimism in the outcomes:
  • Willamette students know how to access resources, and they trust that these resources are effective.
  • 53% of the respondents reported they were currently accessing counseling support (or, approximately 430 of 2201 students overall)
  • 57% of respondents had not consumed any alcohol or drugs in the previous 30 days (or, approximately 465 of 2201 students overall.)
  • Our strong response rate is reflective of a community that cares deeply about health and wellness. Our JED Campus Partner shared that our 37% response rate was the strongest of any school with which she has worked.
• Some minor differences exist in the limited initial data reported to us and the data in the final report. For example, the percentage of Willamette students who self-identified as “flourishing” actually increased a few percentage points when we got our final and weighted data.
• These data would seem to confirm what we know about Willamette students. For example, we know that more students are arriving at Willamette with more complex treatment histories, are currently in treatment, or are currently taking psychotropic medication to support their mental wellness.
• We also know, unfortunately, that Oregon is experiencing a disproportionate impact of the national mental health crisis. The Salem and Portland communities are uniquely challenged by a lack of community providers and an overwhelmed crisis system, which at times can make it difficult for our students to access care.

Statistical Cautions

All Willamette students registered for Fall term, 2021 - undergraduate and graduate at both the Salem and Portland campuses - received an invitation to take the HMS survey. Our response rate varies from question to question; but, at its highest level, there were 817 responses, which represent 37.1% of the population of 2201 students invited to respond¹.

Nevertheless, there are important cautions about how to read and interpret the results:

• We cannot know if the sample of Willamette students is representative of the overall student population for Fall 2021.
  Interpretations should be framed as, “Given those who responded, we know that a minimum of X respondents (which represents Y% of the sample) answered Question “A” with “B” response (e.g., “613 of those who responded (75% of the sample of N=817) answered the “Degree Program” question saying they were pursuing a Bachelor's degree.”)
• Any generalizations - either about our own population or about our own population in comparison to others - should be interpreted with considerable caution, given both the limitations on our data noted previously and differences in the types of schools aggregated at the national level (e.g., large state schools are lumped together with small, private liberal arts schools; large schools often have much lower response rates; etc.)

Accomplishments in the 2022-2023 Academic Year

Several action items have been implemented as a part of the larger JED Campus initiative:

• Campus Safety added a QR Code to the back of every one of the new student IDs that links to a comprehensive list of campus and community support and care resources, including several affinity group support options.
• Several multidisciplinary workgroups are implementing the comprehensive JED Strategic Plan.
• UWill launched in September, 2022, which affords every enrolled student with up to 8 free telehealth counseling sessions, in addition to services available in Bishop Wellness Center.
• Continuing QPR (Question, Persuade, Refer); suicide prevention trainings have been (and are being) delivered to many campus audiences to promote a “culture of care.”
• We have expanded and refined the role of the CARE Team on the Salem and Portland campuses to identify students in distress early and connect them to resources.
• The CAS Faculty/Student Task Force has been developed.
• A new, donor-funded Health Coach and Educator position that is now in place at PNCA.

More specific results from the Healthy Minds Study can be found below:

Demographics

• Race/Ethnicity

  Respondents were able to endorse more than one category in their responses, which is why the sum of the percentages total more than 100%. Overall responses were mostly consistent with the makeup of Willamette University. 84% of the respondents were White or Caucasian, 12% were Hispanic/Latino/a, 10% were Asian/Asian American, 3% were African American/Black, 2% were American Indian/Alaskan Native, 2% were Arab//Middle eastern or Arab American, 1% were Pacific Islander, and 3% identified as “Other”.

• Gender

  This instrument allowed us to gather gender data across a continuum of gender identity. 47% of respondents identified as female, 39% identified as male, and 14% identified as “Other” (Trans man/Trans woman, Genderqueer/Gender nonconforming, Gender non-binary, or “self-identify”).

• Degree Format

  The invitation to complete the Healthy Minds Study was sent to all enrolled students in all colleges and degree programs. 76% of the respondents were in a Bachelor’s program, 11% were in a Master’s program, 9% were in a JD Program, and 4% stated they were in an Associate’s program. Because Willamette does not offer an Associate’s degree, our best guess is that these may have been transfer students or first or second year students that may have mis-interpreted the question.

• Sexual Orientation

  The Healthy Minds Study asked about sexual orientation. 44% of the respondents identified as Heterosexual, 28% identified as Gay/Lesbian, 17% identified as Queer, 12% identified as Bisexual, 6% identified as Questioning, and 8% identified as “Other”.

Help Seeking Behavior and Barriers

• Help Seeking Behavior

  53% of the respondents reported they were currently accessing counseling support (or, approximately 430 of 2201 students overall). Further, 81% of respondents said they know where to go to seek professional help on campus. 85% of the survey respondents agreed to some extent with the statement “I currently need help for emotional or mental health problems or challenges such as feeling sad, blue, anxious or nervous. Among those students who were screened to be at high risk for depression and/or anxiety, 87% have at some point received professional support or treatment for it.

  Many students also reported seeking non-professional help from a number of resources including friends (57%), room-mates (26%), significant other (35%), family (50%), religious contacts (2%), faculty (9%), or staff member (4%).

• Barriers to Seeking Services

  Students were asked what factors caused them to receive fewer services (therapy, medication, etc) for their mental or emotional health that they would have otherwise received. Top reasons included not enough time (43%), financial - too expensive or not covered by insurance (35%), difficulty finding an appointment (34%), not sure where to go (28%), prefer to deal with them on their own or with family/friends (20%), people providing services don’t understand me (19%), and privacy concerns (4%).

Footnotes

The HMS survey will be readministered to all Willamette students in the final year of the JED Campus partnership (academic year 2024-2025) to identify areas of growth and opportunities for continued improvement.

¹Some students completed a few demographic questions at the start of the survey but replied to no mental health related questions thereafter. Their responses are excluded from Willamette’s analysis.

²Moderate or severe depression, as measured by Patient Health Questionnaire-9 (PHQ-9) score of 10-27.

³Moderate or severe anxiety, as measured by a General Anxiety Disorder 7 (GAD-7) score of 10-21.

⁴At risk of an eating disorder, as measured by a Sick-Control-One stone-Fat-Food (SCOFF) score of 3-5.

⁵The JED Foundation measures high-risk drinking as five alcoholic drinks in a row for males and four for females, and Willamette has used those thresholds when reporting the HMS data for students identifying as male or female. No known, validated measure of high-risk drinking exists for TGNQ people. The national HMS sample sets the threshold for high-risk drinking among these students at five alcoholic drinks in a row or more. A more inclusive range of “4 or 5 or more alcoholic drinks in a row” was used for TGNQ students at Willamette, as universally setting a higher threshold of five drinks for all students runs the risk of underreporting high-risk drinking for some students.