Connecting at-risk students to the community is the most efficient and effective way we've found to address the many student wellness trends and issues campuses face. OPM is a primary intervention in support of the Cube Model of Campus-Wide Strategic Planning for Distressed and Distressing Students targeting intervention at multiple levels ranging from the individual to the community to stimulate campus wide dialogue about a range of issues that are critical underpinnings of successful communities. The app provides a forum for surfacing and churning issues to bring awareness to the forefront of campus consciousness. OPM is a tool for engaging issues on campus all the time, i.e., tens of thousands of times per year when your campus's app is at scale.
Every university professional is aware of the overwhelming daily student mental health challenges on college campuses particularly. The data is stark. Young adults aged 18-25 years old have the highest prevalence of any mental illness (AMI) (25.8%). >60% of college students report suffering from anxiety. ~40 percent report feeling so depressed they had difficulty functioning and nearly three-quarters (73 percent) report they could have used more emotional support in the pas
t year. The number one reason cited for not seeking help was fear of stigma. Students can use OPM anonymously and connecting to on-campus help is only one tap away.
Student mental health issues are exacerbated by substance abuse. A study done over 2 years found that over 500,000 students were uninte
ntionally injured because of drinking and more than 600,000 were hit/assaulted by another drinking student.Most dangerous is that 20% of students report being so stressed they have considered self-harm or suicide. 6% of undergraduate and 4% of graduate students have seriously considered suicide in the last year. Nearly half of those students did not tell anyone about it. Meanwhile, 1.5% of college students have attempted suicide; and over 1,100 students commit suicide on college campuses each year.
Contributing pressure to these growing demands on campuses include greater public scrutiny, increased threat of litigation, increasingly diverse student bodies, improved medications enabling increasingly at risk students to enroll and succeed in higher education, increased media attention on mental health issues, improving non-medication mental health treatments, decreased stigma, anxiety provoking domestic and international insecurity, increased cultural pressures including competition, and increased family dysfunction, to name a few. According to a NAMI study, over 45% of students who withdrew due to mental illness did not seek help for their conditions.
References:
https://www.ajmc.com/focus-of-the-week/mental-heal...
https://www.nimh.nih.gov/health/statistics/mental-...http://www.collegedegreesearch.net/student-suicides/
https://www.sprc.org/sites/default/files/migrate/l...