Due to COVID-19, in-person services are closed but telehealth services are available. Please email mwpd@hawaii.edu to schedule.
Welcome to the Mental Wellness and Personal Development Resource page for faculty and staff. MWPD believes that in order for our students to succeed we must embed wellness as a norm within our campus culture. Each and every person on this campus has the opportunity to teach, model, or promote wellness and many of you already do. Below, you’ll find some information that we hope will help create a base understanding of what mental health in college looks like and some concrete resources and tools that can be implemented in the classroom or at campus events.
MWPD approaches wellness as a process of resiliency. When students can experience a sense of agency they become more resilient and their opportunity for success increases. Many of us know that when people experience stress, they start to feel stuck. What we do in those moments of stress can either move us closer to wellness or further from it. As an educational institution, we can’t magically remove barriers or instantaneously put students on a path to success. What we can do though is teach the skills and knowledge needed. While humans are adaptive and inherently resilient to a certain point, we can’t assume that everyone (including ourselves) have a solid grasp on self care, coping, and having a resilient mindset. Wellness can be accessed anywhere, in a therapist's office, through a conversation with a loved one, by being in nature, through writing, or by simply sitting with our thoughts and reflecting. As a kauhale, if we begin to embed wellness into our classrooms and events, we can model and give permission for our students to be aware of this aspect of themselves and seek out opportunities for balance and wellness, which will bit by bit, put our campus as a whole on a path of wellness. For more information on how to integrate wellness into your classroom or event, check out the resources on Mindfulness and Trauma-Informed Education.
Wellness is for All...not just for those with mental health issues
All students experience stress...true.
Many students experience anxiousness...true.
Many students experience self doubt...true.
Most students are juggling school with other life stressors...true.
Faculty and staff are sometimes running late...true.
Faculty and staff sometimes feel overwhelmed...true.
Faculty and staff are sometimes distracted by other things when with students...true.
Mental Health identification and support is key to student success. The ACHA National College Health Assessment (2018) found that in the past 12 months:
62.9%
of students experience overwhelming anxiety
42.7%
felt so depressed it was hard to function
55.1%
felt that things were hopeless
These statistics are representative of students from the general campus population. Some may have had a history of mental health, some may not. The presence of anxiety in 62.9% of students is so significant and relevant because anxiety impacts cognitive processes like memory, attention, and problem solving. Due to this, the following resources have been gathered so that Hawai‘i Community College can start a dialogue around wellness and intentionally integrate it as a strategy for student success. The more we decrease the stigma around mental health problems, the more comfortable students will be to seek out help when it’s needed.
