Introduction

As educators, the authors have all witnessed students cope with academic, social, financial, and familial struggles. However, there seems to be a growing trend whereby they are witnessing students who are feeling an increasing sense of hopeless and inability to persist. Students appear to lack competence, grit, or resilience to work through adversity. This chapter helps readers contextualize the challenges students are facing and how faculty members are gaining the knowledge and skills to learn and understand mental illness, mental health, and well-being in order to improve their ability to serve, support, and educate.

Mental Health and Well-Being

In this chapter, the authors provide a brief overview of the distinction between flourishing and non-flourishing mental health and well-being for people not diagnosed with a clinical mental disorder. While recognizing that genetics and personality impact the well-being of people, research supports the profound impact of societal constructs in American life. As part of a team of faculty who work with undergraduate students in Teacher Education, the authors feel this distinction is essential to understand as medical issues require diagnostics by people trained in that area. The book's focus is to examine what the college community can do to promote flourishing mental health in its social construction in classrooms, on campus and beyond. Dominant influences for non-flourishing mental health and well-being for college students rest in ideologies, happiness seeking and digitalization within American life, membership in groups that are underrepresented and well-intentioned but enabling parenting that ill prepares children for adult responses in life.

What Is Next?

Because the possible problems related to mental health and well-being have been identified throughout the chapters of this book, the authors plan to implement and evaluate these strategies to help provide future directions and frameworks. This chapter describes a future research study and other explorations the authors wish to conduct. Specifically, the authors seek to measure preservice general and special educators' character dispositions (e.g., grit), and use these data to determine how to effectively help college students handle stress. Additionally, researchers hope to examine the use of technology in college classrooms to promote mindfulness. Finally, the implementation of strategies for the college classroom will be implemented and evaluated in teacher preparation coursework.

Dispositional Factors Influencing College Success

Attending college can be difficult for some students. Fong and Loi (2015) noted that these challenges may be the result of attending school in a different city/town away from home, missing family or friends, or balancing the requirements of school with work. Because of this, some students “experience substantial distress” while in school (Fong & Loi, 2015). So, why do students handle stress differently? Perhaps personality, character dispositions, and mindsets impact a student's ability to manage stress. More specifically, a student's grit, self-control, resilience, and self-compassion may impact the student's ability to handle challenges while in college. The authors also discuss how these character dispositions impact a specific audience – preservice general and special educators enrolled in coursework to become K-12 teachers.

Campus-Wide Initiatives

In this chapter, the authors situate mental health issues in the context of U.S. institutes of higher education. They provide a brief history of the provision of mental health services on campus and contends that postsecondary schools should shift to a campus-wide, preventive, proactive approach to promote student flourishing. Four specific areas for interventions are discussed. These include academic or curricular adjustments, increased awareness and knowledge, supportive environments, and appropriate policies and procedures. These initiatives (which are not only the responsibility of “experts”) rely on the open communication and collaboration of all members of the campus community.

Strategies for the College Classroom

College students often encounter situations that may cause them to experience stress and anxiety. The students' response to these situations can impact their mental health and well-being. This chapter discusses the impact of college students' ability to regulate their emotions when faced with stressful situations. Examples of mindfulness based practices that can be integrated into a college classroom are presented as tools to help college students regulate their emotions in order to improve their mental health and well-being.