by Khrystina Warnstadt
Supporting High-Risk Students with Digital Mental Health
The need for student mental health services has increased 40% over the past five years, with students experiencing more mental health issues than ever (Center for Collegiate Mental Health, 2019). Many of these students may actively seek support from school counseling services, but it’s impossible for counselors to keep up with this demand. Meanwhile, 64% of all students who drop out of school drop out because of a mental health issue (NAMI, 2012). Not only are these students dropping out at higher rates, but they have the poorest rates of attendance and lowest GPAs (NAMI, 2012). Students and counselors alike need a solution that accommodates more students while reducing wait times.
Neolth provides stress and mental health support by delivering on-demand, personalized care to students. Neolth’s self-guided digital platform and mobile app were built by healthcare and education professionals, in partnership with a diverse body of students. The solution provides on-demand resources for relaxation, emotional awareness, health education, stigma reduction and even real-time crisis care referrals. Counselors are able to use the platform to track high-risk students’ mental health symptoms, stress levels, and engagement with the platform through our secure health-tracking tool. It’s simple to use, making each counselors’ job a little easier while providing continuous support to students. You can learn more in this 2-minute explainer video.
How Schools Use Neolth
Schools are implementing Neolth in various ways - providing support to their entire student body, using with high-risk students between counseling appointments, and/or integrating the app into their curriculum. Many schools partner with Neolth to offer our program to high-risk students who already work with the counselors. Here’s how they do it.
(1) The counseling department met with our team to get a walk through of the program and a Q&A. Counselors received early access to the app to look through video content, relaxation practices, and the health tracking tool. This provided the counselors with an opportunity to familiarize themselves with Neolth and how it supports students.
(2) During counseling sessions, counselors introduced Neolth to students and helped them sign up for the app. Counselors see aggregated, deidentified information from the student body on their Neolth dashboard. If desired, counselors provide students with a code that connects them to the health tracking feature for monitoring individual students.
(3) Between sessions, students used Neolth’s relaxation practices and watched our educational and stigma-reducing videos. The app selects personalized content for students, creates an individualized learning plan, and sends engagement notifications. We can even implement 24/7 monitoring and real-time crisis referral to a resource of your choice. There’s nothing counselors need to do to engage students between appointments, Neolth takes care of it all.
(4) As needed, counselors review Neolth’s dashboard to get a sense of how the student body is doing. Counselors noticed a decrease in overall student stress, as well as an improvement in their mental health symptoms within four to eight weeks.
Implementing Neolth with these high-risk students was quick and easy - counselors didn’t need to worry about adding anything else to their already busy schedules. By using a code to connect with students on the app, it took seconds to begin tracking their symptoms. This tool made it easy for counselors to monitor students between sessions, improving their outcomes and supporting their mental health. For counselors who only wanted aggregate data, they skipped the code and used the dashboard to visualize the de-identified health status of the student body.
How You Can Use Neolth
Our implementation process is as quick and simple as possible. Within 24 hours, we’ll provide your students and counselors with access to the Neolth platform and will walk you through the entire process. We’re dedicated to supporting both your students and staff, making it easier for counselors to sleep at night by providing assessment, health tracking and continuous support to students. We can even implement 24/7 monitoring and real-time crisis referral to the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline or a resource of your choice. We understand that not all counselors have a background in mental health or the time to devote to learning more during the school year, and we want to help. Ease your mind and support your students with just a click - what are you waiting for?
Ready to take the next step in supporting your students? Schedule a meeting with us to see how Neolth can work for your students.
References
Center for Collegiate Mental Health. (2019). 2018 annual report. https://ccmh.psu.edu/assets/docs/201 8-Annual-Report-9.27.19-FINAL.pdf
National Alliance on Mental Illness. (2012). College students speak: A survey report on mental health. https://www.nami.org/Support-Education/Publications-Reports/Survey-Reports/College-Students-Speak_A-Survey-Report-on-Mental-H
