by Khrystina Warnstadt
Student mental health has been declining over the past few years, with steady increases in anxiety, depression, and suicidal ideation (Liverpool et al., 2020). Attending school during a global pandemic is not easy. Students are dealing with immense stress and anxiety, the need to adapt to new learning environments, the unpredictability of school closures, and limited support offerings. Administrators, counselors, and teachers are struggling to find the right support systems for their students. A growing group of the most innovative schools have found providing 24/7 digital mental health support is the perfect solution to meet their students where they are.
Neolth provides stress and mental health support 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, and stigma reduction. The best part is that it can be implemented with the entire student body in just 24 hours. Here’s a real-world example of how one school did it.
How Schools Use Neolth: An Example of Implementing as a School-wide Wellness Service
Schools are implementing Neolth in various ways - providing support to their entire student body, high-risk students, and/or integrating the app into their curriculum. Grinnell College and Neolth partnered to offer Neolth to their student body as a school wellness service. Here’s how we did it.
1. First, the school identified a staff member who was in charge of the roll out. A Senior Staff Counselor was selected, who was both familiar with students’ mental health needs and outreach programming.
2. The Senior Staff Counselor identified topics of relevance to their students that could be highlighted in outreach messaging, including academic stress, COVID stress, loneliness, imposter syndrome and peer support. The Neolth team created outreach material that addressed these topics.
3. The college used this material to send one email and five instagram posts to students, recruiting 95 students to participate within the first week. Students downloaded Neolth like they would any other app and used the self-guided program in their own time. If they had any questions, they could contact Neolth’s support team. No technical support was required from the college.
4. Continued roll out was a breeze. Neolth provided new outreach material to the college as needed, and students continued to sign up on a steady basis. Neolth even provided the counseling center with aggregate information about student stress levels and mental health symptoms, so they could make informed decisions about school-wide care.
A High Impact Program with Low Time Requirement
By simply using copy and paste email and social media templates, the college implemented a
digital mental health program for their students. After a single email, 6% of the study body had signed up. Furthermore, students experienced a 22.2% decrease in stress levels after just eight weeks, as measured by the PSS-4. These results demonstrate how simple yet impactful it can be to implement Neolth within a school. Since the pilot, Grinnell College has continued its partnership with Neolth. To learn more information about this partnership, results of the pilot, and school-wide implementation you can read this article by Grinnell College.
The roll out at Grinnell College is one example of how Neolth can be implemented quickly and easily to benefit the entire student body. Not every student involved needed an appointment at the counseling center, but they all benefited from the constant, on-demand support Neolth provides. With support from the Neolth team, school staff was able to get the program up and running without changing their workflow. Providing additional resources for student mental health support in the wake of the pandemic was a win for the students and the school!
How You Can Use Neolth
The Neolth team makes implementation as simple as possible. We understand that you have a lot on your plate, and we want to take some weight off of your shoulders. In 24 hours, we’ll provide your students with access to the Neolth platform and provide you with a communications pack to help you implement the program. Developed in partnership with students, our communications pack provides copy-paste outreach materials to maximize impact while saving you time. These templates are pre-made to promote sign-ups and engagement over the course of the school year. Providing mental health support to your students is as simple as sending an email, so 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
Fullmer, L., Fleming, A. R., & Green, K. M. (2021). Perceptions of help-seeking behaviors among college students with mental health disabilities. Rehabilitation Counselors and Educators Journal, manuscript in press.
Liverpool, S., Mota, C. P., Sales, C. M. D., Cus, A., Carletto, S., Hancheva, C., Sousa, S., Ceron, S. S., Moreno-Peral, P., Pietrabissa, G., Moltrecht, B., Ulberg, R., Ferreira, N., & Edbrooke-Childs, J. (2020). Engaging children and young people in digital mental health interventions: Systematic review of modes of delivery, facilitators, and barriers. Journal of Medical Internet Research, 22(6). https://doi.org/10.2196/16317.
