Image: Students at the University of Minnesota have expressed interest in peer support, which can help form connections among students struggling with similar mental health diagnoses
The University currently offers a few support groups and the De-stress program, but students say more peer services would be helpful
By Macy Harder, Mitchell Levesque, Holly Gilvary and Marlee Louden
A 2021 survey of more than 100 colleges asked where students had reached out for informal mental health information or help within the past year. Most reported it was to a friend or a peer.
Another survey from that year of more than 2,000 U.S. college students found strong use and interest in peer counseling to discuss not only stress but anxiety, depression and loneliness.
Sarah Horner, a second year student at the University of Minnesota who lives with depression and generalized anxiety disorder, said she would welcome the option of peer counseling.
“I think that peer counseling is a really good idea, just because I feel like I know that there are people going through the same things in my classes. Maybe the person sitting next to me is experiencing the exact same thing as me, but it’s hard to form those connections without the little push,” Horner said.
The University of Minnesota has some peer support programs for mental health, including one targeting stress management, one for substance abuse and one to support law students’ mental health. Some other universities, including Big 10 schools, have done more to cultivate programs that can train and deploy peer counselors for a wide variety of mental health concerns.
Meanwhile, students on the Twin Cities campus say they want access to more. A survey conducted by AccessU: More Than Stress revealed that 41% of respondents would be interested in using peer specialists, people with a mental health condition who are trained to offer individual, non-clinical support for others living with their diagnosis, if they were offered on campus.
“I feel like people with mental illness are invisible on campus,” Horner said. “It would just be good to have someone that cares.”
What is peer counseling?
The Born This Way Foundation, which works to support the mental health of young people, defines peer counseling as “the process of confiding in trained peers for mental health support.” Peer counseling services can be provided in person, over the phone or via text lines and are offered in both group and one-on-one settings.
One in five undergraduates say they use peer counseling for mental health support, according to a 2021 survey of 2,011 U.S. college students conducted by the Foundation in partnership with the Mary Christie Institute concerning individual and group peer counseling in college mental health. Of the 80% who said they have not used peer counseling before, 62% say they would be interested.
Satisfaction with peer counseling was high among survey respondents. In fact, the Foundation’s key findings reported that nearly 60% of students who use the service thought it was helpful. The report also said that with proper training and oversight, peer counseling has the potential to ease problems that sometimes afflict campus mental health services, including long wait times.
According to the Born This Way Foundation, peer support for mental health varies widely on college campuses, “with some groups directly affiliated with the counseling center, while others operate entirely outside of it.”
Robust programs at some schools
Within the Big 10, Rutgers University, University of Michigan and Indiana University all advertise peer support specialist programs that are meant to support students and often provide a bridge between counseling services and students.
The University of Michigan started an individual student peer counseling program in January 2021 after an on-campus peer support network for mental health saw demand for one-on-one peer counseling. This year, the school enlisted 15 peer counselors to work with students, Ed Huebner, University of Michigan’s assistant director of Counseling and Psychological Services (CAPS), said in a phone interview.
Its peer counselors are trained and supervised weekly by CAPS professional therapy staff, who review cases and recommend approaches or sometimes identify concerns that should be referred to clinical therapists. Huebner said the role of the peer counselor is to “offer solidarity, not solutions.”
“[The] role is to listen to [students], to support them, to validate them and ask questions to help them think through things,” Huebner said. “Their role in a peer support position is to be curious and offer connection and support and encouragement.”
He said there have been no concerns about students being confused about care or peers acting in irresponsible ways. The program makes a clear distinction between peer and professional counseling offered, and cases are reviewed weekly.
“We’re very specific about [the fact that] peer counseling is not professional counseling done by licensed professionals. It’s done by other students,” Huebner said.
Some efforts at the U
The University of Minnesota has limited peer support programs for students with mental health conditions.
Since 2018, Boynton Health has offered Recovery on Campus (ROC), “a community of students in recovery from drug and alcohol use joined by friends who are allies in that journey.” Last fall, AmeriCorps placed a peer recovery navigator at Boynton to work with students using a peer recovery model. The navigator moved to another location in March.
The University’s Law School offers a support group through the National Alliance on Mental Illness (NAMI) for law students, regardless of whether they have a diagnosed mental illness. Sierra Grandy, the group’s facilitator, lives with bipolar II and generalized anxiety disorder. She said peer support groups provide participants with a sense of a community and a place to talk about mental health without stigma.
Grandy also said the peer support groups provide a different environment than therapy might. “The really positive thing about a peer-led support group is there isn’t really a hierarchy,” she said. “There isn’t a medical professional and patient. We’ve all had this lived experience.”
But today, the only peer-to-peer option for all students related to mental health issues is a program called De-stress, which provides a place for students to have confidential discussions about stress with graduate student volunteers, according to Kate Elwell, Boynton Health’s senior health promotion specialist and adviser for De-stress.
As a part of Boynton’s Health Promotion, separate from Boynton’s Mental Health Clinic, De-stress is not designed to support mental health diagnoses. “We provide no clinical care to students. A student who is seeking support specifically related to a mental health condition diagnosis, we make a direct referral to the mental health program at Boynton or student counseling,” Elwell said.
Currently there are five peer helpers as well as 14 appointments available each week at De-stress, but student demand is low currently, according to Elwell.
De-stress came on the heels of a proposal made nearly 10 years ago by two students for a more expansive peer mental health advocate program. The proposed plan included peer educators that would present on topics of mental health, as well as peer supporters who would staff the proposed resource center and “engage in more of a listening, validating and supporting conversational role,” the plan said.
The two students, Chris Luhmann and Adam Moen, took inspiration from initiatives such as the Bridge Peer Counseling Center at Stanford, as well as their own lived experiences with mental health. They sought to introduce a similar option on the University of Minnesota’s campus for mental health.
“The idea was if we get more students who are reaching out to students, that that might be a safer or more accessible way for students to get the support they need on campus,” Luhmann said.
The Provost’s Committee on Student Mental Health, which has since been restructured to be the Provost’s Council on Student Mental Health, considered the idea but denied it.
“A nice alternative”
Some students said it would be helpful to have more than the University’s current offering of De-stress, which is restricted to talking about stress management and does not address mental health concerns. Specifically, they would like to form these one-on-one relationships with peers who understand, and sometimes share, their mental health diagnosis.
Annika Prickett, a first-year psychology student, said peer specialists would be useful in overcoming fear related to having a mental illness.
“I think just seeing another person struggling with the same mental illness is enough, just because mental health is so stigmatized,” Prickett said. “I think having someone who is trained to address this kind of worry and anxiety would help a lot, because you would feel that you are not alone.”
Others said a specialist could ease the loneliness around having a diagnosis.
“If you don’t really know anybody who’s dealing with the same stuff, it’s really easy to feel like you’re alone, and that just kind of adds to the stress and isolation of everything,” Spencer Schmid, a fourth-year nursing student, said. “Therapists are trained professionals, but sometimes you really just need advice from someone who’s actually going through it.”
Roberta Rooker, a third-year transfer student majoring in neuroscience, agrees peer support could offer a sense of connection that clinical support cannot.
“I struggle with feeling like nobody really understands me, because the people that I do go to for support are professionals, but they don’t really know how to personally relate to the issues,” Rooker said.
When asked about plans for such services, the University has continued to reiterate the low demand for peer specialists and peer counseling.
“Our standard practice is always to be responsive to the student community,” Matt Hanson, interim director at Boynton Mental Health Clinic, said in an email. “Demand for De-stress appointments has been low this year, and our surveys about the program have shown some students do not want to work with peers on mental health issues.”
By contrast, surveys on the University of Michigan’s CAPS peer counseling program reveal that its students appreciate connecting with its peer counselors, Huebner said. The value, he said, is “having a peer, somebody that’s not necessarily a professional, somebody that’s maybe have gone through something similar, a student perspective.”
Having properly trained peer counselors hasn’t affected the demand on clinical appointments at CAPS, he said. Instead, the program has created excellent training for students interested in counseling and, more broadly, nurtured a more supportive community for those who need mental health care.
“The peer counseling option has been a nice alternative or additional option to share with students,” he said.
Similar benefits come out of the University of Chicago’s peer support program called “Minds Over Matter,” said Emily Schulze, assistant director for student engagement with the Student Wellness Center, which runs the program. Students seem more willing to use the program because, she said, “it is a safe space filled with peers, rather than staff or administration members.”
Schulze added: “The peer connection is so important when it comes to affecting change on college campuses.”
Matthew Voigt contributed to this article.