Table of Contents
Overview
As campus mental health challenges expand, higher ed leaders must shift from reactive crisis management to proactive, collaborative support systems. Insights from national experts emphasize prevention infrastructure, peer support, trauma-informed response, and scalable technology as critical components of campus resilience.
Insights from national experts on trauma response, student well-being, and building a resilient campus culture.
Student mental health has become one of higher education’s most urgent leadership challenges. From politically charged headlines to campus-specific tragedies, the scope of what constitutes a crisis has expanded, and so must the strategy to respond.
In the recent webinar “Crisis on Campus: A Collaborative Approach to Safeguarding Mental Health and Promoting Student Well-Being,” leaders from The Jed Foundation, The Ohio State University, and Connecticut State Community College gathered to share lessons and strategies to support campus mental health and resilience. The message is clear: institutional leaders must drive the shift from reactive care to preventive, coordinated action.
What counts as a crisis today?
Traditionally, crisis response has centered on isolated events like natural disasters, violence, or loss. But as Micky M. Sharma, PsyD, Director of the Office of Student Life Counseling and Consultation Service at The Ohio State University, explained, today’s campuses are impacted by a wider array of stressors: social unrest, international conflict, community violence, and trauma occurring off campus.
Crisis is not always local, but its effects always are. Institutions must stay attuned to events that may not originate on campus but still deeply affect students’ sense of safety and well-being.
How can institutions build preventative infrastructure?
Prevention isn’t just about stopping crises, it’s about stopping chaos.
Mark Patishnock, PhD. Vice President of School Programs Implementation at The Jed Foundation, challenged the idea that prevention and crisis response are separate functions. Instead, he emphasized the importance of organizational readiness: knowing who’s on the crisis team, what tools and protocols exist, and how decisions are made under pressure. This preparation avoids missteps that can harm students and erode trust.
“It is critical to think about how we’re doing that in the moment, how we are responding from a trauma-informed lens to make sure that we are not creating additional unintended impacts and that things are not going unaddressed that need to be,” Patishnock said.
Leaders can do this by ensuring clear crisis frameworks are already in place:
- A crisis management system understood across departments
- Clear roles and responsibilities for emergencies
- Trauma-informed policies that guide real-time decisions
This kind of infrastructure is a protective factor — and a leadership responsibility.
What should happen in the first 24 hours?
The hours immediately following a crisis are critical, and how you communicate during that time sets the tone for recovery and trust.
Effective crisis communication starts with leveraging your campus experts, particularly your communications and IT teams. Sharma stressed the importance of rapid communication, digital readiness, and coordinated messaging. During a crisis, your website might become the primary resource. Is it ready? Timely, factual information must be easily accessible, not just for students and staff, but also for families and the media.
Leadership must:
- Coordinate communications across departments
- Create centralized resource hubs
- Verify facts and ensure messaging is brief, accurate, and consistent
Panelists also urged taking a trauma-informed approach, with psychological first aid as the initial standard for stabilizing care.
Why peer support matters
Peer networks are a powerful tool in campus mental health strategy, as students often turn to each other before professionals. Meredith Yuhas, PhD, LPC, NCC, ACS, Director of Mental Health Services and Wellness at Connecticut State Community College, highlighted the value of proactively training student leaders to recognize distress, respond with empathy, and refer peers to resources.
These peer groups often have a clearer sense of student sentiment and can communicate in ways that resonate more authentically. Given the limited capacity of most counseling centers, especially on smaller campuses, peer support serves as a critical extension of institutional care. By investing in training and infrastructure ahead of time, institutions can make peer groups a foundational element of both crisis prevention and post-crisis support.
To scale peer support:
- Train residence assistants, club leaders, and peer wellness groups
- Promote mental health literacy
- Normalize help-seeking through “communities of care”
How can technology expand care?
The pandemic underscored just how integral technology can be in supporting student well-being, and that lesson still holds. Digital tools, like TimelyCare, now play a central role in how colleges engage students around mental health.
To be effective, these tools must be both accessible and relevant. Today’s students gravitate toward bite-sized content – think 30-second videos and quick self-check-ins – which means institutions must meet them where they are, both in format and delivery. At the same time, institutions should be selective about what digital tools they endorse. Not all apps are clinically sound, and campuses must vet platforms for evidence-based credibility and cultural fit.
Educating faculty and staff on what these tools offer is helpful, so they can confidently refer students to the right resources. Not every student needs a counseling appointment; sometimes, a guided meditation, a conversation with peers, or even an on-demand yoga class can help bridge the gap.
Ultimately, investing in the right technology and making sure the campus community understands how to use it can expand care beyond the walls of the counseling center.
To maximize impact:
- Audit tools for accessibility and clinical validity
- Train faculty and staff to refer students confidently
- Educate students on options beyond counseling, like on-demand yoga or peer conversations
How should leaders support staff?
Just as students experience crises in different ways, so do the staff who support them. Panelists emphasized the importance of recognizing individual impacts and encouraging a culture of self-awareness and self-care among responding staff. Leaders should promote wellness and resilience-focused activities while normalizing time off when needed.
“You don’t need everyone on your team to be a member of the Avengers,” Sharma said. Giving staff explicit permission to step back helps sustain long-term capacity and prevents burnout during prolonged or repeated crises.
Build policies that:
- Allow flexible schedules and staggered shifts during crises
- Encourage cross-training to reduce burnout
- Provide wellness resources for faculty and staff, not just students
Who owns campus mental health?
The most important shift is cultural: student well-being is not the sole responsibility of the counseling center. It’s a collective mission. The measure of a resilient campus isn’t whether it avoids crisis, but how it supports its people when crisis comes.
Leaders must:
- Model vulnerability and care
- Prioritize wellness in strategic planning
- Allocate resources beyond compliance to compassion and capacity
A resilient campus culture is built through shared ownership, trust, and care.
How TimelyCare can help you lead campus resilience
Higher ed leaders face growing pressure to respond to crises with clarity, compassion, and competence. TimelyCare supports institutions with scalable, evidence-based tools that extend care beyond the counseling center. This year, TimelyCare introduced CrisisNow to provide students a direct phone line with immediate, compassionate support, expanding crisis support outside the TimelyCare app when every second counts.
Contact us to learn how we can help your campus thrive.
Key Takeaways
- Modern crises extend beyond campus borders and demand broader readiness
- Prevention requires infrastructure
- Clear, consistent crisis communication is essential in the first 24 hours
- Peer support networks are scalable and effective
- Technology must be accessible, trusted, and student-friendly
- Staff wellness policies help sustain long-term crisis response
- Campus mental health must be a shared responsibility across departments
FAQs
It’s an approach that centers psychological safety and avoids actions that could retraumatize affected individuals during and after a crisis.
Trained student leaders can often identify distress early and refer peers to appropriate resources, helping scale support efficiently.
Digital tools extend care access, support diverse needs, and offer flexible options beyond traditional counseling.
Flexible schedules, cross-training, and access to staff wellness programs help teams remain effective over time.
Executive leaders set the tone by embedding well-being into strategy, modeling care, and allocating resources to sustain support.
