A statewide issue — Technician 3/21/24

Nine N.C. college newsrooms partner to cover the mental health crisis

Behind the Mental Health Collaborative

Ethan Bakogiannis and Jameson Wolf Editors-in-Chief

is week, Technician is honored to partner with eight other North Carolina college newspapers in a collaborative e ort to cover mental health statewide.

For several months, student journalists across the state have delved into how the mental health crisis has impacted their campuses. What you hold is a printed selection of the more than 30 articles written for the project. e full prod-

uct with all articles can be found on the mental health edition website.

This collaboration aims to bring awareness to issues surrounding mental health across North Carolina through a solutions journalism lens. In addition to exploring the problems that contribute to mental health struggles of college students in the state, the following reporting highlights success stories and ways

If you or someone you know is having difficulty processing grief or having a mental health emergency, the Counseling Center can be reached 24 hours a day at 919-515-2423. If you are in a crisis situation and need immediate help, please call the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline at 988 . In the case of a life-threatening emergency, call 911

The Counseling Center’s website offers free online screenings, a plethora of self-help resources regarding mental health and wellness concerns and a comprehensive list of campus services available for those who need guidance. To view an exhaustive list, visit https://wellness.ncsu.edu/resources/

If you’re seeking professional counseling or other mental health services on campus, visit the Counseling Center’s Getting Started page at https://counseling. dasa.ncsu.edu/get-started/make-an-appointment/ to complete paperwork, set up an appointment and more.

in which people are already working tirelessly to discover and create solutions to the mental health crisis.

e Solutions Journalism Network awarded e Daily Tar Heel a grant in 2023 as part of its Student Media Challenge initiative that helped to fund the collaborative work of this project. We are grateful to the Solutions Journalism Network, Emmy Martin and the sta

at e Daily Tar Heel for making this project possible.

Additionally, we would like to thank the staff of The A&T Register, The Chronicle, e East Carolinian, Niner Times, Old Gold & Black, e Pendulum and The Seahawk for their collaboration on the project. It has been a privilege to work with you all.

Recovery from addiction is possible. For help, please call the free and confidential treatment referral hotline at 1-800-662-HELP, or visit findtreatment. gov. The recovery resources page on Prevention Services’ website, prevention. dasa.ncsu.edu , offers a list of resources for addiction treatment and support.

The Counseling Center can be reached 24 hours a day at 919-515-2423. If you are in a crisis situation and need immediate help, please call the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline at 988. In the case of a life-threatening emergency, call 911

If you are struggling with an eating disorder or know someone who needs support, call the National Eating Disorders Association Helpline at 866-662-1235 For a 24-hour crisis line, text “HOME” to 741741.

Using AI to address mental health

Kate Denning News Editor at Technician

An NC State professor is using arti cial intelligence to ag keywords on X, the platform formerly known as Twitter, in posts containing content that may indicate mental health concerns.

Ana-Maria Staicu, a professor in the Department of Statistics, is conducting this research, funded by a state grant. Staicu said she decided to look into if violent events could be predicted by an individual’s social media activity a er the August shooting at UNC-Chapel Hill. e research also considers trends in shootings since COVID-19 by comparing social media activity before and a er the onset of the pandemic.

“We’re looking at how the mental health trends have been impacted by COVID lockdown,” Staicu said. “ is has been triggered by the fact that a lot of these violent events have happened, have intensi ed, a er COVID. So we wanted to see people who had some mental health issues before, how is their activity a er COVID-19.”

Staicu said the research utilizes AI to analyze what she called the arousal of a post — whether the post is positive, negative or shows any strong emotion at all. rough this function and the use of keywords, AI is able to ag posts containing potentially concerning messages.

A er the post is agged, Staicu said a potential intervention process is contingent on having a control group.

“We need to have a sense of what is a normal tweeting behavior, and to de ne that normal, it’s important to have an age group, right?,” Staicu said. “Because an adult on social media wouldn’t necessarily tweet as a young adult. en we need to de ne what is abnormal.”

Sripad Ganti, a rst-year studying sta-

tistics, has assisted Staicu in the research. A er seeing how data could be used for a good cause, Ganti started the Dreamers and Data Club with the purpose of using statistics to promote social change.

While jump-starting the club, Ganti had the idea to create YUNO, an AI chatbot speci cally designed to address a user’s mental health concerns and distribute resources.

Ganti said he has witnessed students experience long wait times at the Counseling Center and felt as though a chatbot like YUNO, an acronym for Your Understanding Nurturing Observer, could be a resource during those periods.

“I have friends who sometimes try to book appointments to the counseling sessions, and that takes forever; it’s like a week, two weeks sometimes,” Ganti said. “So it was then I decided let’s maybe create some sort of chatbot or something where, I guess it can kinda bridge the gap between the time it takes to get an appointment and just be a helpful resource.”

YUNO is similar to AI models like ChatGPT, but Ganti has been able to train the data in a way that tunes the responses to be mental health-oriented.

“What really, I think, sets it apart a little bit is that you can ne tune whatever the ChatGPT API is to speci cally focus on mental health resources,” Ganti said. “I can put in mental health resources that I nd on the web, or I can put in how you respond to certain things.”

While he hopes YUNO can o er resources to users, Ganti said YUNO should never be used as a replacement for therapy. Instead, he sees it functioning as an on-the-go way to access resources quickly, or simply being a place for users to vent.

“You want to talk to an actual person,”

Ganti said. “But sometimes an actual person is not available right away. And in that time, if you really need some sort of resources, or if you’re looking for resources, or even if you know someone who is struggling, and you want to nd resources for them, that’s the goal of the chatbot.”

Ganti and Staicu said mental health issues are particularly of concern amongst teenagers and young adults. While Staicu said the pandemic is a contributor to mental health issues amongst the younger generation, Ganti said the shock of being thrust into a new, high-pressure environment and the expectations that go along with that is a key factor.

“You’re expected to, all of a sudden, be an adult right away,” Ganti said. “You’re also working with so many students that you feel the need to perform and do well. … Because of that, sometimes people put a lot of expectations on themselves, and that can o en sometimes result in problems and unneeded stress.”

Staicu said doing research like this at NC

State is bene cial because of students like Ganti who realize the need that exists and take advantage of NC State’s resources in order to nd a solution.

“Not only are they strong students, but they’re able to take advantage of the classes that we o er and sometimes really teach themselves to learn how to scrape data, how to write codes to automatically download data,” Staicu said. “We’re talking about thousands of and hundreds of users, right? You can’t do that manually because it takes hours, so being able to have access to coding and improving the skills, I think that’s very helpful.”

Staicu said the issue of mental health is everyone’s responsibility to understand and involve themselves in.

“I feel that there’s a lot of focus nowadays on mental health, but I think we’re just scratching the surface,” Staicu said. “I think there’s more to learn, and I think we have a responsibility to the young people to help them get the life that they deserve and they were meant to have.”

Two universities grapple with student deaths

Emily Vepsa, Emmy Martin

Managing Editor at Technician

Editor-in-Chief at The Daily Tar Heel

Editor’s Note: This article contains reference to suicide and death.

When Sree Yallapragada found out her friend and NC State classmate died unexpectedly of health complications last February, she said she was struck with an indelible pang of shock, regret and deep sadness.

The death of Yallapragada’s classmate, Toni Tutt, hung over their small, tightknit cohort of students in NC State’s English department throughout the remainder of the semester, she said.

As she stood next to her classmates

at their graduation ceremony, she said Tutt’s absence was even more tangible.

“Someone is missing,” Yallapragada recalled thinking.

A few days later, when she learned another NC State student had died, this time by suicide, she felt numb.

“I don’t think there was enough time or way to process what was happening because it was so frequent,” Yallapragada said.

By the end of the 2022-23 academic year, 14 students at NC State had died, seven by suicide. In the five years prior, an average of eight students died at NC State annually, and of those, the institution averaged three suicides per year.

In 2021, UNC-Chapel Hill saw a similar spate of incidents when at least three

students died by suicide in one semester.

Neither UNC nor NC State publicly track the exact number of students who die during their time at the institutions, including those who die by suicide. This makes it hard to determine how many students die at the universities each year.

UNC does not internally track student deaths, UNC’s Dean of Students Desirée Rieckenberg said. An NC State spokesperson did not confirm whether the University internally tracks student deaths, saying only that the process it follows when a student dies is “not necessarily a formal tracking mechanism.”

The lack of record surrounding student deaths is not unusual. In 2018, The Associated Press found that out of the 100 largest public universities in the United

States, 46 tracked suicides among their student bodies. NC State was one of two universities that didn’t provide statistics to AP at the time.

The mental health crisis UNC and NC State face is not altogether unique. Universities across the country are also confronting a 62% rise in suicide rates among teenagers and young adults over 14 years.

This year, four students at the University of Wisconsin died by suicide. During the 2020-21 academic year, three students at Dartmouth College died by suicide. In 2021, two students at the University of West Virginia died by suicide.

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THURSDAY, MARCH 21, 2024

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Avery Cook, the director of Counseling and Psychological Services at UNC, said death by suicide has long been a risk factor for young adults, but that risk has increased in tandem with rates of other mental health concerns.

“I think there are a lot of stressors in the world right now,” Cook said. “We’re coming out of COVID, which was a really challenging, traumatic time for everyone, and we have to remember that each individual is dealing with their own configuration of events.”

Shortly after each campus lost multiple students to suicide, both UNC and NC State partnered with The Jed Foundation through the JED Campus initiative. The nonprofit collaborates with universities to improve mental health programs and suicide prevention efforts. UNC partnered with JED in February 2022 and NC State in September 2023.

NC State and UNC are also two of a growing number of universities that have established protocols for the aftermath of student deaths, commonly known as postvention protocols.

Justine Hollingshead, NC State’s assistant vice chancellor for academic and student affairs, said the University adopted a formal postvention protocol in 2015, and it has evolved over the nine years she has served as the postvention coordinator.

UNC published its postvention protocol on the Dean of Students website in 2022 after several student suicides in 2021 gained significant attention. Rieckenberg said the University made the decision in an effort to prioritize transparency.

“We felt like it was really appropriate and a good time to be able to open up the playbook for folks to be able to see and understand not only what we do, but some of the whys behind what we do,” Rieckenberg said.

What UNC and NC State’s postvention protocols address

After a student death, both NC State and UNC ensure the family and friends have been notified, Hollingshead and Rieckenberg said. The two universities focus on identifying individuals who may be impacted by the death and work to provide care and resources to those deemed highly impacted.

“We can’t control social media or the local media coming with a camera, of course, so there’s sometimes that time lag,” Hollingshead said. “And that’s viewed as a failure on our part, but that’s not a failure. It’s a best practice to make sure we’re being respectful of the family and their notification.”

At UNC and NC State, discussion of student deaths can spread quickly on social media. Both universities’ policies concede that speculation about the circumstances of a student’s death may circulate long before any official information is released.

In the circumstance that either school finds it necessary to send a campus-wide communication, details like the cause of death typically won’t be included. At NC State, official statements can confirm a suicide if the death was public or if information about the suicide is already publicly known.

In campus communications that allude to student deaths, leadership at NC State and UNC have emphasized mental health resources available to students.

Last academic year, NC State Chancellor Randy Woodson released several messages to the community to acknowledge select student deaths and direct students to on-campus support. But this year, the University hasn’t taken the same approach to publicly addressing the death of two students — one of unknown causes and the other, an apparent suicide.

“Sending a mass email out to tens of thousands is not

a best practice,” Hollingshead said.

The change is an effort to be mindful of suicide contagion, Hollingshead said, which is when exposure to suicide can increase others’ risk of suicide. Research has shown that teenagers and young adults can be more susceptible to suicide contagion and clusters.

UNC’s response regarding deaths on campus has been similar. When a student died on campus in April 2023, the sixth death that year, the university did not provide details to local media besides that there was no threat to the campus.

UNC Police only release an Alert Carolina message if there is an ongoing threat to the community. However, students did receive an Alert Carolina message in September 2021 about the suicide of a student at The Forest Theatre, despite the message stating there was “no ongoing threat to campus.”

Steps taken by both universities

Following the suicides on UNC’s campus in fall 2021, the institution launched the Heels Care Network, a website that provides a comprehensive list of mental health resources, events, news and a peer support chat.

Similarly, NC State established the Wolfpack Wellness website in November 2023 to provide a single place to explore the University’s mental health and well-being resources.

Now in its third year of JED Campus, UNC is focused on implementing recommendations from JED and community participation.

In fall 2022, UNC launched a Healthy Minds Survey for the student body and the JED Task Force developed a strategic plan based on the results of the survey. Currently, a group composed of university administrative officials, students and mental health professionals are in the process of implementing initiatives from the strategic plan.

Amy Johnson, vice chancellor for student affairs and co-chair of the task force, said several of JED’s recommendations for supporting student mental health are either completed or in progress at UNC. Of the 79 recommendations, only four had not been started.

During the final stage next year, UNC will readminister the Healthy Minds Survey and complete a postassessment. JED will provide a progress summary and guidance on how to continue improving mental health resources.

“While not all recommendations may be implemented at every campus, we think these findings speak to our strong commitment to supporting student well-being and are grateful for our community’s partnership,” Johnson said in a statement.

In fall 2022, NC State launched a Student Mental Health Task Force. Since the group issued its final report in spring 2023, implementation teams have worked to address several recommendations. The University scheduled regular wellness days, embedded counselors in each college across campus, reviewed its postvention protocols and engaged in the JED Campus program.

NC State is in the first stage of the Jed Foundation’s four-year program, which will continue through spring 2027.

Hollingshead said the partnership with the Jed Foundation has already brought about change to parts of the postvention plan to align it with best practices. The University has provided training for some campus entities that had not previously been trained in the protocol due to high turnover, she said.

“We had kind of missed that piece,” Hollingshead said. “People come and go, so we had not done as good a job of training individuals who might have to respond.”

Hollingshead and other University leaders will continue to enhance NC State’s approach to mental health, she said. JED will conduct a campus visit to NC State from March 28-29 to help inform its assessment and planning process.

Yallapragada said students coping with the loss of a friend or classmate should seek help, adding that it is crucial to lean on resources like crisis helplines and well-being support provided by their university.

“It’s like when you’re traveling and the flight attendants are showing the oxygen mask demo and they’re like, ‘Put it on yourself before you help people,’” Yallapragada said. “Take care of yourself before you tackle everything else.”

JERMAINE HUDSON/TECHNICIAN

In this archive photo taken Sept. 21, 2022, members of the NC State community light candles at the Vigil for Ryan Bohner on Sta ord Commons. Bohner was an NC State student and member of Delta Sigma Phi who died Sept. 8, 2022.

How we talk about suicide online matters

Editors-in-Chief at Technician

A week into our tenure as editors-in-chief, we woke up to a Google Chat message discussing an apparent student suicide on campus the night before.

A er reaching out to the University for con rmation and a statement on the rumor, we opened Reddit and Yik Yak, knowing that, for better or worse, any rumblings around campus would end up there.

While constantly refreshing the pages, we found separate rumors of another student death at a residence hall quickly making their way across NC State chat rooms and message boards.

Countless emails, two breaking news sta ers and one canceled nal exam later, we had spent all day working our way through how to report on two student deaths in less than 24 hours.

roughout that process, we had the bene t of having attended trainings and participated in numerous conversations about the most responsible ways to report on mental health and suicide. Most students on campus who were reading, writing or reposting information about the deaths did not have that bene t.

But when everyone has access to an online platform, the responsibility to minimize harm online extends beyond established reporting outlets to everyone who posts content. What information we share and the way we share it has an e ect on those who view it — and that e ect can be immense.

Media coverage is a primary driving factor in suicide contagion, which is the process by which exposure to a suicide leads to increased risk of suicidal behavior in those exposed. Over the past several decades, researchers have developed guidelines for responsible reporting on suicide, and, when followed, these guidelines can successfully reduce the risk of contagion.

It is a greater challenge, however, to establish and encourage these guidelines on open online forums and social media platforms.

But that shouldn’t stop us from using our own platforms responsibly. With college students spending hours on social media weekly, what we see from the non-news accounts we follow has the capacity to be just as, if not more, impactful than formal news coverage.

One of the rst things to be mindful of is that suicide is not inevitable. Presenting it as a common or acceptable response to struggle rather than a public health issue creates an aura of hopelessness that may prevent people from seeking help.

In the vast majority of cases, mental health treatment is e ective. Sharing treatment resources along with stories of successful treatment can provide hope and o er a way forward for those who are struggling.

As students on NC State’s campus last year, it was o en frustrating to not quickly receive any o cial communication about student deaths on campus as the University navigated privacy concerns, veri cation of facts and how to responsibly keep students informed and supported. In lieu of o cial communication, many took reporting what they knew — or thought they knew — into their own hands.

From our experience, though, one of the most pervasive ways social media users’ posts don’t align with responsible reporting protocols is through speculation of causes and sharing oversimpli ed explanations. Suicide is rarely caused by one reason. Speculations and oversimpli cations, in addition to spreading potentially false information, contribute

to a sense of hopelessness and sensationalization surrounding suicide.

Sharing details such as method and exact location in an instance of suicide can also contribute to the risk of contagion and should be avoided.

Our tendency in grief is o en to celebrate the life of the deceased; however, it is important to avoid pushing narratives of heroism and honor that have the potential to glamorize or romanticize suicide.

is is not to say that we should stop talking about suicide. It is currently the second leading cause of death in college-age Americans, and the stigmatization that comes from not discussing mental health is directly linked to decreased likelihood of help seeking. Suicide is preventable — we must have these conversations responsibly in order to increase education, help seeking and hope.

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GRAPHIC BY JAMESON WOLF

Ethan Bakogiannis

Jameson Wolf

Interdisciplinary lab bridges humanities, STEM

When imagining a UNC-Chapel Hill research lab, a repurposed library in Greenlaw Hall 524 might not come to mind. And when thinking about health research, literature and rhetoric probably also don’t come to mind.

But the English and comparative literature department’s Literature, Medicine and Culture program and affiliate Health and Humanities Interdisciplinary Venue for Exploration Lab are changing that vision.

Co-directed by English professors Jordynn Jack, Jane Thrailkill and Kym Weed, the HHIVE Lab opens a space of vertical collaboration between undergraduates, graduate students and faculty to share their research projects and insights across departments. They work to bridge humanities and STEM fields with the interdisciplinary study of health humanities.

Weed was a pre-med student in college. However, scientific methods didn’t answer her bigger questions about health equity. She later realized her interests in the humanities were relevant to what felt like a different sphere of medicine.

Kaleigh Sullivan is a LMC master’s student researching substance abuse recovery. She said studying mental illness in particular can be incredibly complex and requires both sociological and scientific approaches.

Another master’s student, Dailihana Alfonseca, studies female insanity in immigrant women and how it manifests in their creative works. She said scientific data in mental health research often alienates immigrant identities and does not speak to all aspects of their lives.

Alfonseca said she hopes to initiate creative writing programs that help disadvantaged community members process trauma. She was inspired from writing a short story about the death of her mother, as well as her own immigrant experience and depression.

“So ideally, my research is a way for me to teach mental health providers, teach psychiatrists, teach psychologists that when a person chooses to write a short story that reflects the environment that they grew up in — that is medical research,” Alfonseca said.

“In immigrant stories, often family members with mental health issues are deemed ‘crazy,’ when in reality, they are manifesting traumas they have experienced in their lives,” Alfonseca said.

Ph.D. candidate Paul Blom studies the representation of psychological trauma and violence in literature and media. In his work with early-20th century American literature, he has found that authors were still able to recognize trauma even without the clinical language we know today.

“The idea is helping someone see themselves and realize, ‘Oh, this is what I’m going through’ — or at least, ‘I feel represented; I’m not the only person,’ — it matters on so many levels, even if we’re looking at work decades ago,” Blom said.

Health humanities can also venture outside of prose. Poems, photography, art and research are just a few examples of submissions published by the student-led Health Humanities Journal.

Dance is also a creative way to study health narratives.

In Jack’s past research about how writing can help peoples’ experiences living with diabetes, an undergraduate student working on the project in the HHIVE

Lab found that participants in the study had a pattern of bad experiences with body image. The student thought of dance as a different way to be in one’s body and initiated a diabetes and dance research project.

“I think that’s really unique that we’re in a space where undergraduates can drive a project and make it happen,” Jack said.

Catherine Pabalate joined the HHIVE Lab at the beginning of her sophomore year. She is in the process of submitting a research proposal about drug campaigns for HIV/AIDS and the extent they promote responsibilization — when a patient is charged with the responsibility of remaining healthy.

The concept of responsibilization also has a huge impact on mental health care, Pabalate said.

“There’s this mindset that mental health is a ‘you problem,’” Pabalate said. “It’s due to factors in a person’s life, and it can sometimes overlook the more structural factors that may be causing the stress that leads to poor mental health.”

According to Weed, health is often framed as a binary — either healthy or sick — when in reality, there’s a continuum.

Some people have found it helpful to think of mental illness as a disability, needing more support systems and accommodations, rather than as an intrinsic problem, she said.

“So [mental health] seems like a kind of groundswell from students,” Weed said. “These are questions that they’re grappling with, and want to understand through these lenses of disability studies, health humanities, and I’m sure this is also true in other disciplinary contexts as well.”

COURTESY OF SHAMIL LUQMAN/DAILY TAR HEEL

Charlene Wu Staf Writer at The Daily Tar Heel

UNC-Chapel Hill

UNC addresses financial burdens of therapy

Samantha Nichols Assistant University Editor at The Daily Tar Heel

In 2022, UNC launched the Heels Care Network, a mental health resource hub where students, faculty and staff can search for mental health support on and near campus. Since then, the website has averaged 27,000 visitors per year, according to UNC media relations.

Despite the broad accessibility of this resource, Counseling and Psychological Services Director Avery Cook said there are still several pervasive myths surrounding mental health access on campus.

“A lot of folks come in, and they think that there are session limits — that they only get a certain number of sessions at CAPS,” they said. “That hasn’t been true for about 15 years.”

Cook also said they have heard students think there is a waitlist to see a CAPS therapist, which is not the case — they can walk into CAPS and speak with a therapist that same day.

Most of the services provided by CAPS are covered by the Campus Health fee, a mandatory fee paid each term through tuition and fees by all degree-seeking students. About 71% of the fee is allocated toward the Campus Health budget, and about 29% goes to CAPS, according to UNC media relations. Revenue from the fee constitutes a little over 50% of the total CAPS and Campus Health budgets.

Initial assessments, brief therapy, group therapy and referral coordinations at CAPS are all offered at no ad-

ditional cost to the student. For medication services, CAPS works with students to bill fees through their insurance, Cook said.

CAPS’ primary service is called brief therapy, which is not limited in its number of sessions and helps students work through one area of need. Cook said brief therapy is appropriate for about 70% of students who visit CAPS.

For students seeking long-term therapy outside of CAPS, there are several resources to offset the cost. Cook said CAPS has a specific fund to cover outside therapy for students who demonstrate a high level of need. Others can be set up with providers who offer psychotherapy on a sliding scale at a reduced cost or can be connected to different clinics that also have lower fees.

Tausha Watson, a licensed psychologist in Chapel Hill, said she works with low-income students to offer psychotherapy services at a price that meets their needs while covering overhead costs for her business.

“I really do believe that people should be able to receive financial assistance, that therapy should be affordable to everyone,” Watson said.

Watson said the most common reasons why students would need a sliding scale is because the provider they want doesn’t accept their health insurance plan, they need to access therapy without their parents knowing or they prefer to forgo using their insurance for other reasons.

Under the Student Blue health plan, administered by Blue Cross and Blue Shield of North Carolina, there is a $10 copay fee for undergraduate students seeking mental health services from providers within their network.

viders here,” Watson said.

UNC second-year Mari Tyndall said she walked into CAPS in the fall of 2022 when she was on Medicaid and received help from referral coordinators to match her with a therapist in the area who fit her needs and took her insurance.

During referral coordination, CAPS providers account for students’ preferences regarding the identity and background of a therapist and send them several suggestions that fall within their parameters. Tyndall said this process helped her get set up with a Black, female therapist who specialized in substance abuse issues.

I really do believe that people should be able to receive financial assistance, that therapy should be affordable to everyone.

Tausha Watson, licensed psychologist

Watson also said many providers in the area are hesitant to accept Medicaid insurance due to unwanted audits and interference in therapy, so some students with Medicaid choose to pay out-ofpocket and have the cost reduced with a sliding scale.

“A lot of time with students who have Medicaid, they’re going to struggle to really find outside providers who are Medicaid pro -

She said she is currently working with CAPS to avoid the fee of an official ADHD evaluation so she can be prescribed medicine by a psychiatrist.

“That was a really neat thing that took a load off my shoulders because I’ve had an ADHD diagnosis since I was two,” Tyndall said.

According to Media Relations, CAPS saw 1,812 different students for walk-in appointments last semester, provided 2,414 total brief therapy appointments and serviced 7,067 total medication appointments.

Well Ride, a program started by the Undergraduate Student Government and currently managed by CAPS, provides free Lyft rides for students who live on campus to get to their off-campus therapy appointments.

“Our goal is to make sure that we do everything we can to help students overcome the barriers that they may have to get the services that they need, whenever possible,” Cook said.

Mental health providers, patients face inconsistencies in insurance coverage

Tori Newby, Maddie Policastro Senior Writers at The Daily Tar Heel

Over 15 years a er a federal law prohibited health insurance providers from imposing barriers to accessing mental health care, patients still struggle to nd adequate services and providers.

e Mental Health Parity and Addiction Equity Act, passed in 2008 as a provision of the A ordable Care Act, was designed to ensure patients have the same access to mental health services as they do for physical health. But, for some people, nding mental health care providers that accept their insurance can be di cult.

UNC third-year studying sociology and psychology Kate Doherty said looking for a therapist that takes her insurance, BlueCross and BlueShield of North Carolina, is complicated and time-consuming. She has searched for a therapist online and o en has to crosscheck with the providers’ websites and make phone calls to verify they will accept her insurance.

Corye Dunn, the director of public policy for Disability Rights North Carolina, said there is a shortage of adequate mental health providers.

To accept insurance, therapists must undergo a lengthy and o en intensive application process and wait months for approval, contributing to some of the de cit. And even then, certain insurance companies may not cover all therapy services, meaning therapists must ght for coverage for their clients.

Many therapists are also wary of getting reimbursed when they accept insurance — especially Medicaid — because reimbursement rates are o en inconsistent with their own rates.

“ ose low reimbursement rates make it really tough for anyone to maintain a practice long-term, especially in rural areas,” Dunn said.

Ciara Zachary, an assistant professor of health policy and management at UNC, said even providers that accept a patient’s insurance may have long waits for appointments or may not be taking new patients. She said these barriers may motivate patients to look outside their insurance network for providers, which is o en more expensive.

Zachary said that when health care providers leave an insurance network, it can be disruptive to patients, as mental health providers o en have formed relationships with their patients and understand their personal medical histories.

In a study from the National Library of Medicine released in October 2021, 21% of participants reported that at least one practitioner had le their insurance plan’s network

in the past three years.

“That breaks up the continuity of care, which could really impact how someone goes about their everyday life,” Zachary said.

When she turned 21, UNC fourth-year studying public policy and English and comparative literature Nyami Aghedo lost access to her parents’ insurance and transitioned to UNC’s student health care plan, and she is now unable to receive the same mental health care.

Like Doherty, when Aghedo was looking for a therapist, she said she had to spend time doing research and making phone calls to nd a provider that was covered by her parents’ insurance.

Aghedo said she could hypothetically go to UNC’s Counseling and Psychological Services, which is covered by her school insurance plan, but said she thinks there are barriers that would make school services di cult to access. CAPS o ers brief therapy, but refers patients to community providers for longer term or specialized therapy needs.

e Mental Health and Substance Use Disorder Parity Task Force, established in 2016 as part of the Obama Administration’s e orts to increase high-quality behavioral health care, sought to expand education and awareness about the right to equal mental and physical care services.

For people with disabilities, accessing insurance to cover mental health care can pose a unique set of barriers. Nan Allison, a paralegal advocate for the Charlotte Center for Legal Advocacy, said that while people with disabilities are eligible for Medicaid, the process to be legally deemed disabled, and therefore Medicaid-eligible, could take years.

Allison said it is di cult for people dealing with a mental illness to go through that process, and those who get denied from Medicaid may not have the means to appeal the decision.

“Dealing with the bureaucracy is a challenge,” Allison said.

One benefit of Medicaid is access to six Local Management Entity/Managed Care Organizations — organizations that coordinate services for North Carolina Medicaid bene ciaries seeking treatment for mental health disorders, substance use disorders, intellectual/developmental disabilities or traumatic brain injuries.

LME/MCOs provide services such as emer-

gency care, free clinics for assessments and residential care. Allison said, though, that many Medicaid users are unaware of these resources or struggle to nd time to coordinate with the facilities.

“A lot of people with mental health conditions just nd that challenging and are unable to see the follow through,” Allison said. “So, by nature of the condition, it makes it harder to access the things that are available.”

Allison also said that parents who are ineligible for Medicaid due to their income o en lack access to mental health care for their children. Many families wait months to get an appointment with a therapist, and accessing a child psychiatrist is almost impossible.

According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, nearly one in ve children have a mental, emotional or behavioral disorder — yet only about 20% of those children receive mental health care from a provider.

In terms of mental health care, Allison said Medicaid o en provides more comprehensive services than other insurance plans. She said she has worked with many people who want Medicaid but do not meet the nancial cri-

COURTESY OF CASEY GRIFFITH/DAILY TAR HEEL teria to access it.

LGBTQ+ support groups provide community care for substance abuse

Eliza Benbow Lifestyle Editor at The Daily Tar Heel

When Jemm Merritt-Feder and their ex-partner moved to North Carolina in 2020, they felt isolated in their recovery from substance dependence and afraid to ask for outside help.

Eventually, Merritt-Feder began to look for a therapist who would understand their experiences with both substance abuse and gender identity issues.

“ ere was nothing direct toward queer people, particularly queer people of color as well, who were looking for support,” Merritt-Feder said.

Over the next year, Merritt-Feder became a certi ed peer support specialist and founded One Day at a Time, a peer support group for gender-diverse individuals to discuss their experiences with gender transition, mental health and substance abuse in a non-judgmental space.

e group, which currently has about 15 members, meets monthly in person and via Zoom.

Despite having a clinical background, Merritt-Feder said their biggest role at peer support meetings is to humanize peoples’ experiences.

“ is is a human issue,” Merritt-Feder said. “And people dealing with substance abuse and all these mental illnesses, like, it comes from something else.”

According to the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration’s 2021 and 2022 National Surveys on Drug Use and Health, adults in the LGBTQ+ community were over twice as likely to have a serious mental illness than straight adults.

Members of the LGBTQ+ community were also more likely than straight adults to have had a substance use disorder in the past year, according to the same survey.

Merritt-Feder said that members of the LGBTQ+ community may turn to substances because they don’t have support systems or know that there are other options to work through what they are going through.

Since 2011, the North Carolina Harm Reduction Coalition has hosted a peer-based discussion group for transgender and gender non-conforming people in the Triangle through a harm reduction lens. e group currently meets twice a month — once virtual, and once at the LGBTQ Center of Durham.

e coalition is a statewide non-pro t founded in 2004 providing grassroots harm reduction services and advocating for the dignity, autonomy and self-determination of people who use drugs.

Lo in Wilson, the harm reduction programs manager at NCHRC, founded the group a er noticing a lack of community resources for trans and gender-questioning people in the area. He said that his inspiration for the group was a mixture of his passion for harm reduction and his own desire for community support during his transition.

e group is open to people experiencing any of the stages of drug use, from those actively using to those in recovery, Wilson said, as well as people of all ages.

“Less and less these days, it seems like there are fewer and fewer real intergenerational community spaces where people can learn from people who have some sort of core shared experience that we all share, but we also are coming from di erent places in life and di erent perspectives and di erent cultures and all of that,” Wilson said. “So being able to have that space to learn from each other is

really incredible.”

At One Step at a Time, community building goes beyond the monthly meetings — the group goes on outings to bowling alleys and the zoo, and members a rm one another outside of sessions.

“I’m thinking that we’re just here talking, and then there are people who are getting to know each other and really making connections beyond this,” Merritt-Feder said. ey said everybody heals di erently, and there are people that need community-based support and education to meet them where they are, rather than going to hospitals or rehabilitation centers.

Peer support is not a replacement for traditional mental health care, they said, but it can provide the space for people to talk about things they wouldn’t bring up to a therapist or doctor.

“Historically, most mental health service providers have been cisgender white women — and that’s changing and improving,” William Hall, an associate professor at the UNC-Chapel Hill School of Social Work, said. “But I think it’s really important that, I think, the professionals

providing these services to these communities have lived experience with the communities they’re trying to help.” Hall, who researches mental health disparities among LGBTQ+ populations, said that much of the existing mental healthcare interventions and services for the LGBTQ+ community are not currently tailored to speci c populations within the community.

Both healthcare providers and community members are interested in increasing training and representation within mental health care — which includes representation for immigrants, people of color and people with disabilities — but many of them are not trained to address LGBTQ+-speci c issues in their care.

A few years a er founding the peer support group, Wilson and other trans community members began offering training about how to care for trans and gender non-conforming people to healthcare providers.

“I feel like the level of education and knowledge has really increased over the past 15 years, and it’s nowhere near as dire of a situation as it was,” Wilson said. “Although there’s still, obviously, room to grow.”

COURTESY OF HEATHER DIEHL/THE DAILY TAR HEEL

COURTESY OF RIYA SHARMA/DAILY TAR HEEL

How Wake Forest trains its faculty to be on the frontline of mental health care

Christa Dutton Senior Writer at Old Gold & Black

At Wake Forest and universities across the nation, students are fighting an unprecedented battle with mental health struggles, and faculty are often the first line of defense.

“Often a student first shares with their faculty person,” said Warrenetta Mann, assistant vice president for health and wellbeing at Wake Forest. “Students care a lot about their academics here, so [for] anything that negatively affects academics — or even has the potential to — a student is likely to go to [their] faculty person and say, ‘Hey, you just need to know that this thing is going on.’”

According to Matt Clifford, Wake Forest’s associate vice president of the Division of Campus Life and dean of students, faculty and staff are the primary referral source to Wake Forest’s CARE Case Management team, which reviews referrals submitted by students, faculty and staff when they are concerned for their own wellbeing or the wellbeing of a friend. The referral is then reviewed by a case manager who connects them to the appropriate campus resource, like the Counseling Center or Safe Office.

The university does not require faculty to attend trainings but offers optional sessions such as Care 101, a training series that includes a 1.5-hour in-person session, a one-hour online session and access to a resource workbook.

Mann and Clifford both agree that requiring training would be difficult, as it would add to professors’ already busy workloads. Still, they said, they want to

equip faculty with the tools they need to help students.

“We want to make sure that faculty don’t feel like they’re left alone to figure out how to respond in the right way,” Mann said.

According to Mann, 18 faculty and staff members were trained at the beginning of this year to be ambassadors who will host their own mental health care training sessions this semester.

Clifford said the university’s philosophy is to create a culture where faculty care enough to learn how to recognize and respond to mental distress in their students.

“What we find is that a lot of our faculty voluntarily engage in not only mental health things but the Alcohol and Other Drugs Coalition and other coalitions to address specific issues on campus,” Mann said.

Mann said Wake Forest takes a “concentric circles” approach when it comes to mental health training.

“The people who really care will come to all the trainings, and then they’ll go back to their departments, and it’ll rub off on some of the other people, and then that’ll rub off on some other people,” she said.

Meredith Farmer is an associate professor of core literature at Wake Forest who has taught at Wake Forest for 10 years. She said she often receives anxious emails from students, and it is not uncommon for students to show up to her office crying, often about an issue in another class.

“Students are absolutely struggling,” Farmer said.

Across campus, in the Department of Health and Exercise Science, Abbie

Wrights teaches a required course for first-year students called HES 100: Lifestyles and Health. She says that she has frequent conversations with students outside of class about their mental health, but her students are not all experiencing crises.

Wrights said signs of mental distress in students can be summarized into three categories: actions, appearance and academics. With a front-row seat to how poor mental health is affecting students in her classroom, Wrights knows the telltale signs — not coming to class, diminished quality of work or communicating hopelessness in their assignments.

“I feel like we’re on the front line,” Professor Crystal Dixon, who also teaches a HES 100 course, said.

Without required training, faculty are left to decide how they will practically address the current mental health epidemic in their classroom. Many professors look for ways they can minimize stress during class time. Wrights decides not to cold call. Farmer does not require students to explain their absences and offers extensions when students need them.

Wrights, Farmer, Dixon and other professors at Wake Forest are all aware they are not licensed mental health professionals but view themselves as liaisons to campus resources.

“We have a responsibility to at least refer students,” Dixon said. “I don’t think we have to be the solution. … I think we should always have someone that we can hand off [to].”

Wake Forest counseling improves services

Breanna Laws Managing Editor at Old Gold & Black

The COVID-19 pandemic posed challenges to the Wake Forest University Counseling Center and forced the center to adapt its methods. Now, with the acute challenges of the pandemic largely subsided, the Wake Forest UCC has increased its satisfaction rating among students.

In the first year of the COVID-19 pandemic, the global prevalence of anxiety and depression increased by 25%, according to the World Health Organization, and college students were among those struggling.

The Wake Forest UCC witnessed this increase. In a statement made to the Old Gold & Black by former UCC director Dr. Warrenetta Mann in November 2021, around 40% of students reported experiencing general instances of anxiety and depression. At this same

time, the UCC had less than 10 providers able to help students.

Other universities across the nation struggled to meet this spike in demand, especially as resources were spread thin. According to a 2019 survey completed by the Association for University and College Counseling Center Directors, nearly 90% of counseling center directors reported an increase in students seeking services. Combine this with the staffing struggles many universities faced during the pandemic, and one has what seems to be a recipe for disaster.

Staffing shortages

The UCC stayed understaffed from 2019 until fall 2022, when they hired two additional counselors. According to current UCC director, Denisha Champion, staffing has been the primary area of concern.

“My main goal, particularly since becoming the director, has been making sure that we are doing a really good job of identifying really good clinicians, doing some recruiting and getting our staffing levels back,” Champion said.

This, however, proved to be a slow process. As a result of low staff numbers, the UCC turned to alternative routes of care, including a single-session model and a partnership with the virtual therapy resource TimelyCare.

The single-session model was designed to address immediate, non-chronic issues. Students could schedule an appointment with the UCC on an instance-by-instance basis but could not have an established therapist. Students with more chronic conditions were typically referred to off-campus providers who could better assist them.

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COURTESY OF EVAN HARRIS/OLD GOLD & BLACK

Wake Forest University

The partnership with TimelyCare was designed to do something similar: address immediate and low-level concerns. While the UCC was not staffed enough to provide services to all students who may have needed them, TimelyCare operated as a way to fill this gap.

Unfortunately, according to Champion, both of these programs had a low turnout rate with students. The Old Gold & Black published two opinion columns on the programs — “UCC turns its back on struggling students” and “TimelyCare is inaccessible” — and several students expressed their views in interviews with the Old Gold & Black, which covered the UCC changes as they occurred.

“In regards to the UCC, the current situation is unacceptable,” said thenthird-year Annie Brigham, in the Old Gold & Black article “University Lays Off UCC Counselor Despite Calls for Increased Staffing.”

Brigham also started a petition on the website Change.org listing demands from the UCC, which attracted 525 signatures.

In another news article, “Another two counselors leave the UCC over break,” then-junior Dana Hindi told the Old

Gold & Black that they were unable to remain a patient at the UCC due to staffing issues.

“I’ve been seen [at the UCC] for a year, and they told me last semester that they can no longer have me as a patient because of the lack of counselors and the influx of new patients,” Hindi said. “I feel for them. I really do. It must be difficult to get a constant stream of people struggling in this pandemic and not have the staff to take care of them all.”

Isabella Mason, a current fourth-year studying English at NC State who transferred there from Wake Forest, as well as the writer of the two aforementioned Old Gold & Black opinion columns, recalls the difficulties of getting services at the UCC during its staffing shortages.

“I remember students would talk about how the services sometimes felt impersonal or like an attempt to just get students in and out,” Mason said.

This “in-and-out” feeling was particularly salient during the UCC’s implementation of a single-session model. When the UCC rolled out this program, many students felt as though the center had lost a lot of its credibility.

“I felt it was wrong for the UCC to roll out changes that disadvantaged students but were marketed as a ‘better’ way for their office to operate,” Mason said. “It was hard to sit there knowing the UCC had cut down to only offering single sessions to students while funding for

things like athletics were clearly very high.”

Coming out of the struggle

Responding to an influx of negative feedback, the UCC made some changes to its operations. Long-term care returned to the UCC in the spring of 2022, and the TimelyCare partnership was dissolved in the summer of 2023.

Since its re-implementation of longterm care and increases in staffing, the UCC has seen overwhelmingly positive

feedback on the semesterly feedback form it sends out.

Champion said the fall 2022 UCC Client Satisfaction Survey showed that 86% of clients agreed or strongly agreed that the UCC improved their quality of life, and 89% agreed or strongly agreed that they would seek services again.

“I’m always glad to hear students give us feedback because, at the end of the day, we’re here for the students,” Champion said. “Listening to their concerns in real-time [is] super helpful for me as an administrator.”

COURTESY OF ISABELLA PAROLINI/OLD GOLD & BLACK

EAST CAROLINA UNIVERSITY

Community building within ECU

Kiarra Crayton

Editor-in-Chief at The East Carolinian

When going to college, most students leave their family and their community — a move that can take a toll on their mental health, especially because college is most students’ rst time away from home for an extended amount of time.

Anyanso Kalu, a fourth-year studying public health, found his community in the Talented Empowered Aspired Men organization. Kalu is a rst-generation Nigerian student who knew a cousin that attended East Carolina University around the time Kalu was a freshman.

His cousin introduced him to T.E.A.M. and asked the other members of the organization to treat Kalu like a brother.

Now the president of T.E.A.M., Kalu still says the organization has a close community. For example, he said if a member were to text the organization’s group chat saying they were stranded, a member would go and help them — even in the pouring rain.

“ at’s why I’m so big on T.E.A.M., be-

UNC WILMINGTON

cause I’ve seen what it’s done for me and for others,” Kalu said. “It’s like when you come into college you need somebody of the same gender who has your best interest in mind. And that community o ered it and for Black men there’s nothing else besides fraternity life.”

Without being a part of T.E.A.M., Kalu said he wouldn’t have met his lifelong friends. He said his con dence level would’ve taken longer to get to where it is now. Kalu said he was very shy coming into college but this past year, he ran for the Student Government Association Vice President position.

Genesis Ray, a fourth-year studying public health, said she feels a strong sense of community with the African American students of ECU, but she said it’s di erent from the larger Pirate Nation community.

She said being a part of the Black community at ECU has made her feel heard and understood, Ray said that’s because there’s some things no one else can relate to other than Black students.

“Even though they might say like, ‘We’re all welcome,’ or try to make us feel welcome, that feeling isn’t universal,” Ray said. “I just feel like some of the, even down to the activities and things, aren’t really catered to Black culture.”

At least once a year, the Black Student Union hosts a showcase which Ray described as a way for students to dress up for the theme and celebrate. It’s a time for students to embrace their culture with music, art and performances by various organizations around campus.

Ray said something the community could improve on is capitalizing on opportunities and being more inclusive and open to other members. When white students wanted to join the Black Student Union, Ray said other members questioned if that was something the organization would do. Ray was open to the idea.

“We have allies and people wanting to learn more about our culture,” Ray said.

In the upcoming years, Ray hopes that the general ECU community and the Black

community will come together more o en.

“It’s actually down to the recent election we just had,” Ray said. “And you know, us being involved in student government, things like that.”

For international students with the distance from home to ECU being so far, it’s important for them to try and nd a community to feel a part of. e International Students Association does just that. Recently the organization has been hosting weekly co ee hours for international students to come and socialize with other international students.

Victor Ihuka is the president of the ISA and an international student from Nigeria. He said international students face a lot of challenges normal students might not know of.

“So what we try to do is create a community for everyone,” Ihuka said. “Everyone really has to create a community, and what that means is people don’t realize the challenges. I mean, how di cult it is to move from a di erent culture.”

Mental health of queer students at UNCW

Hannah Markov

Staf Writer at The Seaha

UNC-Wilmington is no stranger to conversations about the queer community. LGBTQ+ issues have largely moved to the forefront of political discussions and legal battles in both Wilmington and North Carolina as a whole.

In addition to the immediate legal and educational impact, recent book bans,

“Don’t Say Gay” policies and other antitrans laws across the country are also having mental health implications for members of the queer community.

A recent study conducted by e Trevor Project, an American organization dedicated to suicide prevention e orts for LGBTQ+ youth, found that 75% of LGBTQ+ youth nationwide o en felt stress or anxiety due to threats of violence against queer

spaces.

As a result, 45% of transgender and nonbinary young people experienced cyberbullying, 24% experienced in-school bullying and 10% experienced physical assault. Twenty-nine percent of queer youth also reported not visiting their doctor or hospital due to personal safety concerns.

At UNCW, a university with an overwhelmingly straight and cisgender popu-

lation, e Seahawk spoke with a few students and recent graduates on their experiences as members of the queer community.

Hannah Lowman, a third-year studying criminology, received an associate degree from Coastal Carolina Community College before coming to UNCW.

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QUEER STUDENTS

continued from page 11

She came out as lesbian in March 2023 and described Mohin-Scholz LGBTQIA Resource Center, the LGBTQ+ resource center at UNCW, as her found family.

“Being here at UNCW has been good,” she said. “Luckily there’s Mohin-Scholz, which has been a really big blessing to me because they’re very open, accepting and it’s helped me discover my true identity and learn a lot more about being queer than ever before.”

Lowman said her family at home is not very supportive of her sexuality.

“Even though there’s a lot of students who are cisgender, straight, it’s not forced,” Lowman said. “I do have to say that UNCW is very accepting to students who are queer.”

e Mohin-Scholz LGBTQIA Resource Center is located on the rst oor of Fisher University Union and provides resources such as LGBTQIA prom, trivia nights and Safe Zone, which are four workshops geared toward faculty and sta that educate them on the queer community.

e director of Mohin-Scholz, Brooke Lambert, joined the center in 2016. She entered the position a er a year of it being vacant and described the post-pandemic years as the most di cult in her time working as director.

“ e whole climate on campus felt a little di erent than we have experienced before,” Lambert said. “ at’s not how I feel things are now, but last year things were not quite as supportive and welcoming as they have been previously.”

Discussion groups, called Building Q*mmunity, are another one of the resources provided by Mohin-Scholz. e program is not designed to be therapy, but rather to connect students with the UNCW Counseling Center. Lambert said the collaboration brings an openly queer therapist to MohinScholz’s space in Fisher every week.

“Knowing that queer youth experience more mental health issues, we want to make sure that that is an accessible resource for everybody, but we certainly want to make sure that our queer students feel like that’s an accessible resource [for them],” Lambert said.

Nitya Budamagunta, a second-year studying creative writing at UNCW, moved to Wilmington from Cary, North Carolina, and described both cities as being fairly conservative with pockets of queer people. e main di erence, Budamagunta said, was the diversity, or lack thereof, in the queer community in Wilmington as compared to Cary.

“With my experience as a queer person of color, the big thing for me is dealing with, ‘How do I blend the culture that I come from with queerness, especially when a lot of the culture I come from is already a ected by colonial ideals,’” Budamagunta said. “Maybe my culture was more accepting of queer people in the past, but colonialism happened, and it isn’t anymore.”

Budamagunta, who immigrated from India as a child, said she has not met people at UNCW with the same background as her

but nds acceptance and a support system through the LGBTQ+ community at the university. She said she struggled for over a year to nd people who understood her culture, traditions and experiences as a queer person.

“I was going to transfer my freshman year because I felt so isolated,” Budamagunta said. “It was not just the fact that I was dealing with the isolation of being in a place where nobody knew what Diwali was, but also on top of that, I was dealing with being in a place that was pretty conservative and not very open to queer people. It was really isolating.”

Recent graduate Michael Friant struggled to nd a community with shared experiences as well, noting that having more than one identity made it di cult for him to connect with others like him. He said he chose Wilmington out of convenience and initially attended Cape Fear Community College before transferring to UNCW.

“As a person with a disability, cerebral palsy, it would not be feasible to just start in another city/state,” Friant said. “I never really felt I belonged. I can count on my hand the number of times people have asked me about my sexuality and stu .”

HBCUs grapple with tuition increases and student mental health

Dasia Williams Culture Reporter

Many factors can a ect the state of college students’ mental health: things like adjusting to a new schedule, lacking career plans a er graduation or not nding the desired community upon entering campus.

Knowing that queer youth experience more mental health issues, we want to make sure that that is an accessible resource for everybody.

-Brooke Lambert

One issue that can a ect the mental state of students who attend historically Black colleges and universities stems from the crippling idea of having to pay back a large amount of student loans, and the increasing tuition on these campuses has only further created the pre-existing disparity.

According to a 2013 study done by the Fredrick D. Patterson Research Institute, 80% of HBCU students borrowed federal loans compared to 55% of non-HBCU peers.

Even though HBCUs continue to o er more affordable higher education than non-HBCU schools, nancing college often involves students and families taking on loans, coupled with sporadic increases in out-of-state tuition rates.

In 2013, Howard University had a tuition and fees cost of nearly $22,700, and in 2023 that went up to over $33,000.

Over the past decade, the overall tuition and fees increase rate at Howard University, a notable private school, is over 45%.

Courtney Copeland, a biology student, wonders where the money goes when the architectural structure of the dormitories have problematic issues.

“Over winter break, many units in my building ooded, and many students had to be moved to di erent rooms and buildings,” Copeland said. “I think Howard raising our tuition a ects most people considering it was already high, and it’s frustrating to see how many issues we’ve had this year, and I wonder what that money is going towards.”

Friant also shared a fond memory from his time at UNCW, describing the visibility he felt during one moment with a friend.

“I was at a house party with some friends; I was hanging out on a hammock when one of my friends came over and said, ‘All you need now is a cute boy by your side,’” Friant said. “In that moment, I felt seen and heard.”

When asked what advice he would give to queer people considering attending UNCW, Friant marked the importance of connecting with the local LGBTQ+ community. He also noted that LGBTQ+ students should expect to feel lonely and be strategic about those to whom they disclose their identity.

Funding changes, instructor wages, building upgrades and rising operating expenditures could all impact these rates. Every university could have a di erent set of motivations.

In 2013, N.C. A&T’s — the nation’s largest HBCU — tuition and required fees for an out-of-state student were $15,550. In 2023, its tuition and fees rose to over $20,000. Over those 10 years, out-of-state tuition alone at N.C. A&T increased nearly 26%, and in-state tuition increased by over 15%.

Daiyana Brooks, a second-year studying computer science, said it’s hard enough to adapt to a new environment and that the tuition increase adds stress.

“ e nancial side of college can get you down and make you feel bad about yourself and your overall experience,” Brooks said. “You have to come up with ways to nancially support yourself to make sure you have enough money to even be in college.” e issue of tuition increases is not solely an N.C. A&T problem. Over at Howard University, tuition has also been steadily rising over the past decade.

At Spelman University, the most expensive private HBCU, the overall tuition and fees increase is around 22% over 10 years. Kylar Dee, a fourth-year studying journalism, said having to take out more student loans to pay for her last semester hinders her post-grad plans.

“As I get close to the nish line, not only am I having to look for a great opportunity a er school, but I’m also looking for ways to pay o high debt in student loans,” Dee said. “It adds extra stress on me.”

Economic intuition

Je rey Edwards, an economics professor at A&T, emphasizes the importance of survey analysis and cohort studies to gain insights into tuition changes and their mental health impact.

E ectively communicating research ndings, especially those related to the nancial implications of in ation, is crucial for informed decision-making among university administrators.

‘‘Conducting a survey analysis, a cohort of students and having students understand the market price, they would learn that they are getting o pretty cheap compared to other schools,” Edwards said.

How UNC-Charlotte student-support organizations help international students

Sunnya Hadavi and AJ Siegel Editor-in-Chief, Copy Editor at The Niner Times

As the population of international students at UNC-Charlotte grows, so do the challenges these students face, particularly with o -campus housing. International students rely on student organizations and initiatives for aid and avoiding exploitation.

As of spring 2024, 2,036 international students are enrolled at UNC-Charlotte and represent over 90 countries, according to the International Student and Scholar O ce.

Indian students make up the majority of international students at Charlotte at approximately 60%. In fall 2023, 1,257 of 2,163 international students were from India, and the majority were pursuing their master’s degree.

Before coming to campus and beginning their studies, these students are responsible for the research and costs associated with travel and living in the United States.

Despite not being in the United States to check their options, international students

must secure housing before all o -campus apartments fill up. The Triveni Indian Student Association bridges the gap and represents the interests of students when securing housing.

“I help students get o -campus housing, so I see what was wrong with the housing because they are not physically present over here,” said Pritesh Ambavane, secretary of the Triveni Indian Student Association. “[ ey] put that trust in me that this is the person who is telling me that this housing is good … [and knows] what Indian, the mindset, is like.”

The Triveni Indian Student Association is one of a few student organizations that actively aids international students at Charlotte. For the fall semester, the Triveni Indian Student Association helped approximately 600 new international students. For spring, they helped 100 new students.

Most international students tend to live o campus, which is largely due to rent costs and location.

ey tend to live in the same complexes, including University Terrace and Asheford Green because they are within walking dis-

tance of Charlotte’s campus.

“Most international students don’t have cars,” said Yash Tadimalla, president of the Graduate and Professional Student Government. “So they are forced to live close to campus within walking distance. e walk to campus [is] sometimes easy, but sometimes it’s not; it’s not always safe a er dark.”

International students o en do not receive their security deposits back. According to Ambavane, the building managers do not track which tenants cause damage, so if there is damage to an apartment, the most recent tenant is charged, even if the damage was present before they moved in.

“When students come to the apartment, they leave the apartment in the same condition, but the owner thinks that things [have been] changed, … and they charge accordingly,” said Ambavane. “But they don’t know that the students have not damaged the apartment; it was like that already.” Security deposits not being returned is not a new issue.

“Our o ce has been meeting with international graduate students about o -

campus landlord-tenant matters since the rm opened in May 2022,” said Ashley McAlarney, director of UNC-Charlotte Student Legal Services, Inc. “ e majority of our clients in landlord-tenant matters are international graduate students. And the overwhelming majority of our graduate student clients across all areas of law are international students.”

International students facing concerns with housing maintenance and damages o en turn to the Triveni Indian Student Association, which advocates on their behalf and pushes landowners to resolve problems promptly.

COURTESY OF SUNNYA HADAVI/NINER TIMES

AthleteTalk helps student-athletes improve mental health literacy

Bryson Foster Outreach Coordinator at The Niner Times

Editor’s Note: This article contains reference to suicide.

Mental health is becoming a central talking point in college athletics. Athlete suicide forced the issue into the spotlight — in spring 2022, ve NCAA student-athletes died by suicide as universities looked to nd resources for student-athletes.

A report from Global Sport Matters stated that despite the bene ts of sports participation for female student-athletes, the risk of suicide persists. For male student-athletes, the stigma of mental health issues makes it hard for some to ask for help. In a world where conversations about mental health are becoming normalized, athletes are still not talking — only 10% seek mental health assistance.

When asked about the mental aspect of competing in college athletics, Charlotte junior cross-country distance runner, Maddon Muhammad, said caring for his mental health is critical.

“When it comes to cross-country, 95% of the sport is mental and the other 5% is your ability and training,” Muhammad said. “ is year, the biggest thing holding me back was my mentality. If you get into your head, no matter your training, your brain will always beat your body.”

e need for mental health resources at UNC-Charlotte is crucial, and AthleteTalk, LLC is stepping in to help universities deal with these tragedies and the mental grind. AthleteTalk is a mental health and wellness app that provides daily plans on a social media wellness feed. ese plans include wellness videos, mental health workouts and a sharing feature.

AthleteTalk has created partnerships with multiple universities, such as the University of Detroit Mercy, Texas

HBCU

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Many factors can a ect the state of college students’ mental health: things like adjusting to a new schedule, lacking career plans a er graduation or not nding the desired community upon entering campus.

One issue that can a ect the mental state of students who attend historically Black colleges and universities stems from the crippling idea of having to pay back a large amount of student loans, and the increasing tuition on these campuses has only further created the pre-existing disparity.

According to a 2013 study done by the Fredrick D. Patterson Research Institute, 80% of HBCU students borrowed federal loans compared to 55% of non-HBCU peers.

Even though HBCUs continue to o er more affordable higher education than non-HBCU schools, nancing college often involves students and families taking on loans, coupled with sporadic increases in out-of-state tuition rates.

Funding changes, instructor wages, building upgrades and rising operating

Southern University and the University of Texas at Austin. In December 2022, the company partnered with the University of North Carolina at Charlotte.

e company is in the second of a three-year partnership with Charlotte Athletics. Founder and former UNCCharlotte student, Emmett Gill Jr., said the partnership means a lot to him.

“We are really thankful to be partners with Charlotte and Charlotte Athletics,” Gill said. “It really is a full circle for me to be able to serve the athletes at my alma mater.

e elements are there, and the fact that this was a topdown is really special. As a former student-athlete at UNCCharlotte, it was one of the rst schools we wanted to build that partnership with.”

expenditures could all impact these rates. Every university could have a di erent set of motivations.

In 2013, N.C. A&T’s — the nation’s largest HBCU — tuition and required fees for an out-of-state student were $15,550. In 2023, its tuition and fees rose to over $20,000. Over those 10 years, out-of-state tuition alone at N.C. A&T increased nearly 26%, and in-state tuition increased by over 15%.

Daiyana Brooks, a second-year studying computer science, said it’s hard enough to adapt to a new environment and that the tuition increase adds stress.

“ e nancial side of college can get you down and make you feel bad about yourself and your overall experience,” Brooks said. “You have to come up with ways to nancially support yourself to make sure you have enough money to even be in college.”

e issue of tuition increases is not solely an N.C. A&T problem. Over at Howard University, tuition has also been steadily rising over the past decade.

In 2013, Howard University had a tuition and fees cost of nearly $22,700, and in 2023 that went up to over $33,000.

Over the past decade, the overall tuition and fees increase rate at Howard University,

a notable private school, is over 45%.

Courtney Copeland, a biology student, wonders where the money goes when the architectural structure of the dormitories have problematic issues.

“Over winter break, many units in my building ooded, and many students had to be moved to di erent rooms and buildings,” Copeland said. “I think Howard raising our tuition a ects most people considering it was already high, and it’s frustrating to see how many issues we’ve had this year, and I wonder what that money is going towards.”

At Spelman University, the most expensive private HBCU, the overall tuition and fees increase is around 22% over 10 years. Kylar Dee, a fourth-year studying journalism, said having to take out more student loans to pay for her last semester hinders her post-grad plans.

“As I get close to the nish line, not only am I having to look for a great opportunity a er school, but I’m also looking for ways to pay o high debt in student loans,” Dee said. “It adds extra stress on me.”

Economic intuition

Je rey Edwards, Ph.D., an economics pro-

fessor at A&T, emphasizes the importance of survey analysis and cohort studies to gain insights into tuition changes and their mental health impact.

E ectively communicating research ndings, especially those related to the nancial implications of in ation, is crucial for informed decision-making among university administrators.

‘‘Conducting a survey analysis, a cohort of students and having students understand the market price, they would learn that they are getting o pretty cheap compared to other schools,” Edwards said.

COURTESY OF EMMETT GILL AND ATHLETETALK, LLC

Phoenix Free promotes sobriety at Elon

Avery Sloan

a a i it r at The e l

Months before coming to Elon University, fourth-year Syd Danziger made the decision to become sober. Without fully knowing what that would entail, Danziger entered Elon feeling isolated and striving to keep this aspect of their identity quiet.

“It can be really hard to be surrounded by a bunch of young people who haven’t come to that conclusion yet or aren’t affected by what those habits can do to your life,” Danziger said.

Now, Danziger is the president of Phoenix Free, Elon’s collegiate recovery community. Danziger said despite initial hesitation around making their sobriety part of their identity, having Phoenix Free as a community has been crucial to their college experience and sobriety.

Elon is one of nine universities in North Carolina receiving funding from North Carolina Department of Health and Hu-

man Services for its collegiate recovery program. In Alamance County, there were 106 alcohol-related deaths in 2021, and there were 109 alcohol-related deaths the year before, according to the NCDHHS. These two years had the highest alcoholrelated deaths since 2000.

Danziger said the culture around drinking in college, and Elon specifically, is prevalent, causing people to have certain perceptions of sober students. Danziger said they’ve encountered people assuming they aren’t fun at parties or that they are more uptight.

“When you have a school like Elon, which is very heavy on the alcohol, there are certain stigmas that aren’t talked about yet that I’m trying to get out in the open,” Danziger said.

Danziger said Callie Kelly, Phoenix Free adviser, and Rodney Parks, Elon Registrar, are two of their biggest supporters on campus — and reasons they felt comfortable sharing their story.

“Both of them encouraged me in their own ways without pushing me,” Danziger said. “And kind of reminded me that, regardless of how scary I think my story might be to people, someone’s going to need to hear it.”

Kelly is also the adviser for the Alcohol and Substance-free Housing for Elon Students Living Learning Community.

ASHES, located in Global Neighborhood, is an LLC dedicated to first-year and second-year students who are committed to being substance free. While Kelly said each student has a different reason for sobriety, this shared living space is helpful for building community.

Due to ASHES’ location on the first floor of Jackson Hall, it only has a few spaces for students. Kelly said this means living on the LLC is competitive, but students not living on the floor are not precluded from attending events. Kelly said she became the adviser for the floor in 2016 and interest in living in the LLC has grown since then, both in numbers and amount of events.

In addition to an adviser, ASHES has a student liaison who communicates directly with Kelly on a regular basis. This position has helped shape the trajectory of the LLC in building connectivity within the floor through more events such as traveling to different parts of the state and monthly dinner meetings.

“Over the years they’ve shared with me just how integral just that first year on campus was and being connected to ASHES and how it really set the foundation for them,” Kelly said. “It gave them the support the community and the confidence to withstand external pressures.”

Phoenix Free has also seen growth, even

within Danziger’s time at Elon. Danziger said when they joined, it was them and one other student attending events. Now, Danziger said the organization can expect about 10 students to be present for events.

While Phoenix Free started as a substance-free space, it has now evolved to become a more general safe space for students. Danziger said students who are recovering from eating disorders, other mental health issues or trauma in general all have a place in Phoenix Free.

“This is primarily a mental health space, more than anything else,” Danziger said. “It’s about recovering and togetherness and not about judgment. And so, while a lot of our events are substance free, they don’t require you to be sober.”

Through both Phoenix Free and ASHES, Kelly said students have been able to find community in a space that can be difficult to be sober in. Kelly said students within ASHES and Phoenix Free don’t have any animosity toward other students who make other choices regarding their alcohol consumption, but having a separate space where students are making the choice not to drink can be a benefit to these members.

“They didn’t feel like they were missing out on anything their first year or second year; it was just as fun and memorable without the alcohol,” Kelly said.

College culture’s influence on eating disorders

Nia Bedard Staf Writer at l e et r

Editor’s Note: This article contains reference to eating disorders.

Elon psychology professor and clinician Bilal Ghandour, whose research revolves around perfectionism and impulsive behaviors, has found that eating disorder behavior evolves from a strong sense of needing to be perfect and an inability to let go of high demands.

Eating disorders generally begin to develop between the ages of 18 and 21 — the college demographic — according to the National Eating Disorders Association.

“College is a really tricky period because you’re thrust into a new world as a young adult; you’re asked to do so many things all at once, and the pressure is high,” Ghandour said. “One way to contain that pressure and gain some level of satisfaction is through control. It can be by restricting ourselves to feel more powerful and in control, or you can feel out of control and have a desire to binge eat or eat excessively.”

Ten percent to 20% of women and 4% to

10% of men in the college demographic suffer from an eating disorder, according to The Child Mind Institute, an organization focused on providing psychological and psychiatric services to children and their families. There is also concern for college athletes with eating disorders.

Ghandour said college athletics could make an eating disorder worse due to the environment and expectations of college athletes. He also said being in sports can create an environment of competition, sacrifice and perfectionism, which could lead to athletes creating certain negative eating habits or changing their perception of food.

Apart from athletics, Ghandour said eating disorders can manifest in both men and women. The National Eating Disorders Collaboration reported that a third of the people with eating disorders are males.

“For men, the manifestation of eating disorders has gone up a bit, but it usually manifests itself through a kind of body physique,” Ghandour said. “So if you want to gain muscles, there can be a dysmorphic or an inappropriate way of looking at food and your body.”

Ghandor said within the last 10 to 20 years, there has been a shift in the way that women want to look — from tiny and thin to strong and skinny — due to the body fitness movement making its way onto social media. This can manifest in different eating disorder behaviors such as anorexia nervosa, bulimia nervosa or avoidant/restrictive food intake disorder. There have been developments across college campuses to bring more awareness to the issue of eating disorders developing for college students. Elon Campus Recreation & Wellness is raising more awareness and held a Love Your Body Month in February.

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