A New Mental Health Resource For College Students

A new emotional support and resilience building program for college students is scaling up at institutions across the nation, offering a new resource to campuses that continue to struggle serving the large number of students experiencing mental health concerns.

RADical Health is a four-week class that helps equip college students with coping strategies they can use before reaching a crisis point that might require intervention by a professional. The curriculum stresses skills like mindfulness, active listening and communication, self-care, decision making, and time management.

The program was developed by the RADical Hope Foundation, which was founded by Pam and Phil Martin in honor of their son, Chris, who died by suicide in the Fall of 2017. “Our mission is to break the grip of emotional isolation that is killing our young people. We do this by expanding and delivering measurable, science-based programs that fill critical gaps and equip America’s youth with the skills they need to thrive,” said Pam Martin.

The RADical Health curriculum was designed in 2020 in partnership with New York University and in consultation with numerous behavioral health experts to ensure that it was well-grounded in empirical research. And it’s also based on what the developers heard from talking to hundreds of students across the country to learn directly about their greatest stressors and the skills they needed to help cope with emotional crises.

RADical Health will be in place at more than 30 colleges and universities across the nation this fall, including Amherst College, Fairfield University, Delaware State University, Drew University, Emmanuel College, Metropolitan State University of Denver, New York University, Pace University, Prairie View A&M University, the University of Akron, and Wesleyan University. More than a third of the partners will be HBCU’s (Historically Black Colleges and Universities) or HSIs (Hispanic Serving Institutions).

The classes (you can see an example that was recently featured on NBC TODAY) are led typically by peer guides, although in a few cases faculty serves as the leaders, covering the following sequence of topics:

• How Do I Connect? Strengthening Emotional Intelligence
• What Matters To Me? Principles & Priorities
• Why Am I Stressed? Building Resilience
• Where Do I Go From Here? And How Do I Get There?

Some colleges supplement the class with additional resources. For example, New York University added “career readiness skills” to the program, resulting in an opportunity for participants to earn a “Career Accelerator” certificate. Wesleyan University added a fifth week to the program focused on diversity, equity and inclusion and its importance at Wesleyan.

RADical Health also customizes an online platform for every college partner so that students can use the program as an on-ramp to their own school’s resources and activities.

RADical Hope funds every element of the program for all the institutions that host it so it’s free for all students, and it costs institutions nothing to offer it. The expenses typically now run about $50,000 per institution. The Foundation’s funding has come largely from private and corporate donors, with major financial and in-kind support provided by organizations such as Bank of America, the National Football League, and Warner Brothers Discovery.

According to RADical Hope’s Liz Feld, who became its CEO in 2019, the program’s goal is to reach one million participants as soon as possible. She plans to use the National Governors Association and direct contact with state governors to help build the program’s scale.

Feld believes a key advantage of the program is its emphasis on peer guidance and support. As she told me, “so many students have concerns that don’t require a professional clinician; they can benefit greatly from the understanding, help and wisdom of their fellow students, and that’s what RADical Health offers.”