Do digital mental health services support university students?

Since the COVID-19 pandemic, universities have invested in additional online mental health resources to support students, but how effective are these programs and do they serve all students as many claim?

The report, released May 30 by Temple University’s Hope Center, commissioned by the Ruderman Family Foundation in partnership with the Healthy Minds Network and Boston University, analyzed nine digital mental health interventions commonly found in higher education institutions in the U.S. Researchers found that while these tools may be useful for improving mental health, there is little direct evidence showing how they benefit student populations.

The greatest benefit of these tools is that they are accessible to students who may not have access to traditional counseling and prevention or health promotion tools to get ahead of student crises.

overview: Digital mental health interventions (DMHIs) are the use of technology for mental health support, prevention, and treatment, including behavioral and psychological strategies. Most DMHIs provide self-guided, supportive, or preventative resources to support people with less urgent needs through digital-plus solutions.

DMHIs can be websites, mobile apps, virtual reality, online platforms, etc. Young people are already more likely to use health apps for stress, sleep, and meditation, and those with depression are even more likely to use mobile apps for mental health support.

In the report, DMHI refers to consumer-facing skill-building platforms, rather than traditional counseling delivered over virtual platforms such as Zoom. Researchers also excluded teletherapy platforms that don’t offer additional support services.

Things necessary: Mental health issues among students have been on the rise for a long time, but the pandemic has highlighted the issue and drawn attention to the impact mental health has on student success, explained Sarah Abelson, assistant professor and senior director at the Hope Center and one of the report’s authors.

The pandemic has forced agencies to become more creative in providing telehealth and teletherapy, resulting in more agencies adopting digital mental health interventions.

DMHI is also growing as a solution for college mental health support, as more students are seeking help with more serious issues and traditional counseling center services cannot meet their needs.

Spring 2023 Student Voice Survey Inside Higher EducationA survey conducted by College Pulse found that half of students with mental illness have never used on-campus counseling services.

Online offerings can be scaled more easily while remaining effective and engaging for learners.

Although DMHI is popular, many people still prefer face-to-face therapy, making this an additional solution rather than a replacement.

In conversations with campus leaders and counseling centers, the report’s authors learned that DMHI is viewed as a supplement to on-campus counseling services for comprehensive support, Abelson said.

Investigation result: Of the 89 DMHIs in higher education institutions, 47 percent were effective in improving key outcomes, 34 percent were partially effective, 11 percent were ineffective, and 7 percent did not report on mental health outcomes.

While there is generally research pointing to the effectiveness of DMHIs in improving mental health, Abelson said the intervention is largely lacking in widespread use with student populations: “There really hasn’t been a lot of research done to explore how this works in the real world… [or] More rigorously controlled studies.”

Among the studies with positive results, none utilized DMHIs that are widely available to college students, and participants in these studies represent select groups of students and may not be representative of the average student in the U.S. One review of these studies found that 91 percent of studies on DMHIs were conducted at universities, 2.2 percent at four-year universities, 5.6 percent at technical schools, and 1 percent at community colleges.

Another gap in the research is the adoption or reach of these interventions, which is one of the touted benefits of many DMHIs: the number of students potentially impacted by the intervention. Only four of the 89 studies (less than 0.5%) mentioned adoption of the program. Of those who use DMHIs, most only use them once (although students also have the highest number of appointments per student per year at their university counseling center).

Abelson was surprised by the lack of evidence, given the current level of interest and investment in these tools from higher education leaders.

“Institutions, sometimes systems, sometimes states, are paying large amounts of money, but administrators don’t necessarily know what that money is being used for or how many students are using it,” Abelson said.

so what? Based on their findings, the researchers recommend that institutional leaders pay attention to the effectiveness, data security, user experience, and cost of the products they use.

Additional considerations:

• DMHI as part of comprehensive support. Online tools cannot replace traditional mental health supports, such as counseling, which has been proven effective in improving the mental health of college students. But “DMHIs not only supplement traditional mental health care, but also support students with less acute needs and are a preventative resource that may reduce future mental health care needs,” the report states. Abelson encourages campus leaders to view DMHIs from three perspectives: health promotion, prevention, and intervention, because all of these are necessary to support students’ success in college and beyond.

• The value of research-based decision making. More research is needed to better understand these tools and how they can or should be used. Before selecting a tool, agency leaders should ask providers about usage data to understand the evidence, which can encourage providers to provide input up front, Abelson says.
• The needs and inclusion of a diverse student population. Of the current research on DMHI, few studies have focused on college students and even fewer have included racially or ethnically diverse participants. Before adopting a tool to serve the entire campus community, leaders should verify its effectiveness across target populations and survey campus participants to understand the needs and preferences of the tool.
• Financing such tools. Interviews with counseling center directors and other experts in the field revealed that there was little discretionary budget available to implement DMHIs or the decision was made to purchase products above and beyond the health and counseling centers without considering the specific needs of the campus. “Institutions need to consider stretching their budgets so they are not making tough choices with limited funds,” Abelson said. Grant programs at the state or federal level should also fund evaluation studies along with this research and address the need for more research.

Do you have any wellness tips that can help promote student success? please tell me.