UMD Increases Mental Health, Wellness Services

Expanded on-campus services for substance use treatment, a wellness ambassadors group for graduate students and peer-led workshops in living-learning communities are among the new initiatives at the University of Maryland this fall to support mental health.

In addition, the Counseling Center will introduce an embedded clinicians program, in which mental health care providers are based directly in four schools and colleges, and deploy a new team to expedite access to mental health treatment, while the Faculty Staff Assistance Program is adding a new counselor.

Access to all this will be simplified on a just-launched UMD website that compiles the vast array of mental health and well-being resources available to Terp students, faculty and staff, and families—from After-Hours Crisis Support to guided meditation to visits with therapy dogs.

The additional investments in well-being aim to strengthen a culture of care at a time when universities nationwide are seeing an increase in the number of students struggling with mental health-related issues. UMD convened a task force in 2022 to examine the mental health and well-being needs of students, faculty and staff, the current landscape of resources offered on campus, and new recommendations that can enrich existing services. The group found that loneliness, isolation, anxiety and depression persist among students, staff and faculty.

“Our campus looks like the mainstream of universities across the country in terms of the degree of distress and mental health and well-being challenges among our student population who came out of the pandemic,” said Senior Associate Vice President for Wellbeing Warren Kelley, who co-chaired the task force with School of Public Health Dean Boris Lushniak, M.D.

Comprising undergraduate and graduate students, faculty and staff members and university administrators, the task force spoke with a range of Terps to understand the needs at UMD.

Their recommendations included developing communications strategies to let more people know about the current scope of offerings available, expand training in mental health first aid and other skills for lay people, and adding more courses on mental health, like the class “U SAD?: Coping with Stress, Anxiety and Depression.”

“There are champions and experts on our campus who are willing to invest and engage in creating a more healthy environment,” said Kelley.

Here are just a few of the new ways UMD is supporting Terps.

Substance Use Intervention and Treatment (SUIT) at the University Health Center
Students struggling with alcohol, nicotine, cannabis and other drugs have access to newly augmented medical services at the University Health Center (UHC), thanks to an enhanced Substance Use Intervention and Treatment (SUIT) team.

It’s led by Rachel Alinsky, M.D., a specialist in both addiction and adolescent medicine who arrived at the university earlier this year. The first physician to focus exclusively on substance use at UMD, Alinsky can prescribe medications like naltrexone to treat alcohol addiction, and others that can help with the insomnia and emotional dysregulation that can accompany cessation of cannabis use.

Though cannabis has been legalized in Maryland, and many students have the “perception that everybody uses cannabis” without problems, Alinsky said, lots of people become dependent on the drug. Skipping classes, dropping out of clubs and spending excessive amounts of time alone in residence hall rooms can all be signs that cannabis use has gotten out of hand, she said.

SUIT also offers nicotine patches, gum and lozenges, fentanyl testing strips and Narcan (the medication that reverses opioid overdoses), and has given these resources to many resident assistants and other staff and faculty members, said Alinsky.

A team of three therapists, who round out the SUIT team, work with Alinsky for counseling related to substance use.

“We want to help students be successful in their goals,” she said.

Wellness Ambassadors in the Graduate School
This year, graduate students will have a new source of support when they need a hand: other graduate students.

Through the Wellness Ambassadors program, which started accepting applicants last spring, two graduate students will lead programs on topics like burnout, power dynamics in academia and self-care.

“The Wellness Ambassadors initiative came from this idea of, what if students were the go-to in really having autonomy and power in their own approach to wellness?” said Simone Warrick-Bell, graduate academic counselor.

Last semester, she put out a call asking for graduate students to submit proposals on programming they’d like to offer. After Warrick-Bell worked with the students to refine their proposals, Eden Rivera Ph.D. ’26 and Shue Kei Joanna Mok Ph.D. ’25, both in the Department of Counseling, Higher Education, and Special Education, received funding from the Graduate School to bring their ideas to life.

Mok’s arts and crafts workshops will create a low-key environment in which participants can talk about their experiences with issues like burnout and imposter syndrome. Other workshops will ask participants to share recipes from their cultures to inspire busy graduate students cooking in their own kitchens.

Rivera’s programs will focus on wellness practices for future educators, like breathing and meditation, yoga, journaling or creating art.

“Graduate communities may feel like they’re being left out of the system of programming,” said Warrick-Bell. “This puts it into their hands to say: You’re not being left behind.”

Applications for new Wellness Ambassadors will open in October. Learn more on the Graduate School’s website.

RADical Health in Carillon Communities and College Park Scholars
For many freshmen, starting college is the biggest jolt of their young lives. A straight-A high schooler might be rattled by their first C-plus. A teen with a boisterous group of friends back home might be unsettled by the prospect of developing new relationships. A neatnik might be at a loss for how to communicate with a messy roommate.

RADical Health, a new peer-led program offered through Carillon Communities and College Park Scholars and introduced to UMD by Kelley, empowers Terps to become leaders in preventative mental health care by giving them the tools to facilitate workshops that get first-year students talking about what’s giving them stress, and how to manage it.

“I can talk all day about mental health and well-being and how I manage my time, but for students to have the opportunity to share from their own lived experience, and for them to be teaching their peers—that’s a much more sustainable and effective model,” said Abigail McEwen, an associate professor of art history who leads Carillon’s Art and Activism community.

RADical Health is a project of RADical Hope, a Massachusetts-based foundation started by Pam and Phil Martin after their son, Chris, died by suicide in 2017. Through RADical Health, the organization now works with more than 60 campuses across the country—plus youth groups, athletic leagues and even a few NFL teams—to develop a corps of peer educators who lead a four-week program focused on creating a sense of belonging, building resilience and learning critical life skills.

In the pilot program last year, students in Carillon Communities and College Park Scholars underwent training before leading their weekly discussion groups with other Terps. This year, 31 students are serving as peer guides for more than 360 students in Carillon Communities. (College Park Scholars expects to resume its participation in the future.)

Eesha Gogineni ’27 was skeptical of the program last year when she was a student in Carillon’s Art and Activism community, having heard what she considered impersonal, perfunctory mental health messages from speakers in high school. Instead, RADical Health was “a pleasant surprise,” said Gogineni.

“Every day last year I’d have this routine, and this class broke that routine and got me thinking more mindfully about my behavior,” she said. This year she’s a peer guide, and hopes to give other students the same chance. “I really want to give them that space to pay attention to things they might not be able to otherwise in their day.”