Anxiety, Coping & Self-Care – On-Demand Training

Help Students Manage and Overcome Current Mental Health Challenges

Eighty percent of college students reported the COVID-19 crisis has had a negative effect on their mental health and one-fifth say it has significantly worsened, according to a survey conducted by Active Minds in April. And 41 percent of college presidents said the mental health of students was among their most pressing pandemic-related concerns in a survey conducted by the American Council on Education.*

There is no doubt that 2020 has been a prolonged period of collective stress, loss and fear. We have all been in an ongoing transition of reactivity and adaptability. Students, faculty and staff will experience the beginning of a very different academic year, whether on campus or remotely. Combine the societal crises of today with the critical developmental tasks for young adults and their stress can quickly drift into overwhelming anxiety. 

How do we help our students flourish amidst very reasonable fear and other difficult emotions?

Our mental health expert — Dr. R. Kelly Crace, the Associate Vice President for Health and Wellness and the Director of the Center for Mindfulness & Authentic Excellence (CMAX) at The College of William and Mary — offers crucial, actionable takeaways for helping students effectively cope, engage in healthy self-care and manage stress/fear effectively. 

You’ll walk away with a greater understanding of why today’s students are particularly vulnerable to anxiety, why today’s climate exacerbates these factors, and the type of support you can provide to best mitigate their impact so students can stay on track academically and psychologically.

*Reported by The Chronicle of Higher Education in May 2020.

Topics Covered

Get actionable takeaways so you can:

• Educate students on how to manage the fear, intense sadness, isolation, and anxiety they are feeling to help avoid them spiraling into a crisis.
• Provide students with coping strategies associated with flourishing — help them achieve success, despite having lost many of their usual coping mechanisms, with a combined message of being resilient while also recognizing their grief.
• Teach students specific daily strategies to healthfully contend with today’s ongoing transition of uncertainty, reactivity and adaptability.
• Offer students six strategies for managing fear more effectively — help students turn stress into growth.

Presenter

Dr. R Kelly Crace is the Associate Vice President for Health and Wellness and the Director of the Center for Mindfulness & Authentic Excellence (CMAX) at The College of William and Mary. He is a licensed psychologist and the co-author of Authentic Excellence: Flourishing & Resilience in a Relentless World and the Life Values Inventory. He has published and presented in the areas of values, flourishing, resilience, life role development and transition, and organizational development.

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