Wellness Issues For Higher Education

Wellness Issues for Higher Education is an essential resource that addresses a range of student wellness issues confronting professionals in college and university settings. Organized around five dimensions of Wellness—Emotional, Social, Intellectual, Physical, and Spiritual—this book comprehensively covers key topics that contribute to students’ success in college. Each topical chapter includes proactive wellness advice, and is designed to prepare the reader to better understand the facts, issues, and strategies appropriate for addressing the issue. Each Chapter Features: Background information, theory, and research Historical and emerging issues Common questions, controversies, challenging situations, and misconceptions Practical applications for the campus This practical guide prepares practitioners to understand and deal with the wellness and health promotion issues contributing to their students’ overall success and well-being. Armed with this valuable resource, higher education and student affairs professionals can work to improve academic performance, retention, satisfaction, and quality of life. This thorough resource will guide those working at any level in residence life, student activities, orientation, health education, student leadership, advising, instruction, and other areas of student development.

This essential resource addresses a range of student wellness issues confronting professionals in college and university settings. Building on Wellness Issues for Higher Education, this latest volume comprehensively covers key topics that not only contribute to students’ success in college, but also help students maintain wellness after graduation. Taking a holistic perspective of wellness, coverage includes numerous issues, including body image, time management, financial wellness, dependence and recovery issues, career planning, and civic engagement. It also addresses ways of organizing campus efforts on wellness. Each topical chapter includes proactive wellness advice and prepares the reader to better understand the facts, issues, controversies, misconceptions, and strategies for addressing the issue. This practical guide prepares higher education and student affairs professionals to understand the wellness and health issues contributing to their students’ overall well-being both during and after college.

Wellbeing is foundational to citizens’ individual and collective ability to acknowledge, address, and alleviate ongoing struggles, shared risks, and the unprecedented challenges of our time. A holistic focus on wellness across campus communities is timely and important, given that national and global justice movements are calling upon post-secondary institutions to address the ways in which education systems have been reproducing dominant narratives, reinforcing systemic discrimination, and retaliating against education leaders who work to disrupt structural inequalities. Leadership Wellness and Mental Health Concerns in Higher Education offers diverse perspectives about whether and how campus leaders around the world are sustaining and advancing health and wellness in unprecedented times and amplifies diverse voices in the exploration of how to advance individual and collective wellbeing in higher education. Covering a wide range of topics such as stress management and burnout, this reference work is ideal for academicians, scholars, researchers, administrators, practitioners, instructors, and students.

Student wellbeing is foundational to academic success. One recent survey of postsecondary educators found that nearly 80 percent believed emotional wellbeing is a "very" or "extremely" important factor in student success. Studies have found the dropout rates for students with a diagnosed mental health problem range from 43 percent to as high as 86 percent. While dealing with stress is a normal part of life, for some students, stress can adversely affect their physical, emotional, and psychological health, particularly given that adolescence and early adulthood are when most mental illnesses are first manifested. In addition to students who may develop mental health challenges during their time in postsecondary education, many students arrive on campus with a mental health problem or having experienced significant trauma in their lives, which can also negatively affect physical, emotional, and psychological wellbeing. The nation's institutions of higher education are seeing increasing levels of mental illness, substance use and other forms of emotional distress among their students. Some of the problematic trends have been ongoing for decades. Some have been exacerbated by the COVID-19 pandemic and resulting economic consequences. Some are the result of long-festering systemic racism in almost every sphere of American life that are becoming more widely acknowledged throughout society and must, at last, be addressed. Mental Health, Substance Use, and Wellbeing in Higher Education lays out a variety of possible strategies and approaches to meet increasing demand for mental health and substance use services, based on the available evidence on the nature of the issues and what works in various situations. The recommendations of this report will support the delivery of mental health and wellness services by the nation's institutions of higher education.

Understanding the entrepreneurial nature of universities—in particular, the relationship between education and health in relation to development and wellness of communities—this volume provides a description/narration of the efforts in how universities can address their shifting contexts while engaging their communities in social change. In the development of this book, we have explored how reforms in American higher education are impacting the role of universities and their faculty. Contributors were asked to imagine possibilities for research and outreach by providing salient examples of how higher education can lead and change how we view the role of health and education within institutions and society. Each author writes across common themes that address the problems and possibilities of higher education curriculum and projects aligned with the mission of stewardship. The authors highlight interdisciplinary approaches and projects for faculty work, modification of the Teaching-Research-Service expectations, and community initiatives that can emerge from real-life problems (to impact wellbeing) and create rich and deep research possibilities for practitioners to impact both higher education and society. The process and research approaches used by the authors include imagining the community as part of a process of the change and part of what changes, exploring how community change can build on the strengths of local people, and why community organization and advocacy should revolve around social learning and community capacity theories. Given the diversity of topics and approaches, as editors we have tried to honour both the authors’ words and style in expressing their opinions to provide a forum for the readers to envision stewardship.

Good mental health is essential for students to manage the challenges that university life presents. This book offers pragmatic guidance to support academic and student services staff in engaging with this critical issue, both in terms of being proactive within their role to promote a positive approach to wellbeing, and understanding how to care appropriately for students who may not be flourishing in the university environment. Key topics include: · The pressure points and transitions of student life · The crucial role of departmental and academic staff · How to make mental health policies work · The legal obligations and limits of student support · Creating the conditions for confident support

The chapter authors address life transitions and the university student experience, as well as the challenges of caring for university students with mental health issues. The book has positive strategies, including ways to foster mental health for distinct university student populations.

This book provides college and university personnel administrators with information and resources for the development and expansion of wellness programs at institutions of higher education. The five contributed chapters address some of the issues involved in the development of wellness programs. In Chapter 1, "Wellness in Higher Education" by R. Neil Schmottlac, a rationale is presented for the need for wellness programs in higher education. Next, in the chapter called "Integrating Wellness into the University: Key to Wellness Program Success," the same writer focuses on the integration of the wellness program into the organizational structure of the university and provides guiding questions to assist in the assessment stage. Chapter 3, "A Human Resources Perspective on Wellness and Employee Assistance Programs," by Robert S. Foldesi, focuses on the placement of wellness and employment assistance programs as integral parts of the Human Resource Management Division. Chapter 4 and 5, presented in a different format from the first three chapters, are sources for ideas and inspiration for the development and expansion of wellness programs. Chapter 4, "Wellness Ideas that Work," by Merry Anne Schmied, briefly highlights successful ideas for wellness programs and chapter 5, "Wellness Resources," by Linda Sorrels, contains addresses, telephone numbers, and descriptions of federal government resources, worksite wellness resources, resources from voluntary agencies and advocacy groups, books and conference proceedings, organizations and institutions, periodicals, employee assistance programs, conferences, and hotlines. The first three chapters also include references. (JB)