I remember college as a time full of connections and relationships. At Alma College, my alma mater, students are required to live on campus all four years, and I felt the benefits of being immersed in academics, extracurricular activities and community. If my roommate was gone to class or for the weekend, I was just a doorway away from friends. When I graduated and moved into seminary housing, I felt very lonely and struggled to find “my people.”
Many years later, I now serve as the interim director of spiritual life at Alma College. Of course, the world has changed, people have changed, and the college has changed. Yet, a troubling shift in the mental health of students has happened in just the past few years. During a stage of life when community should feel most accessible, Alma students are reporting increased social anxiety and feelings of isolation.
I recently sat down with the Associate Vice President of Counseling and Medical Services at Alma College, Dr. Anne Lambrecht, to better understand these recent mental health trends. For years, the top presenting issues for Alma students have been anxiety and depression. Sometimes, they swap slightly, but these two diagnoses have been nearly always even.
Between 2022 and the present, anxiety and depression remain the top issues, but anxiety has surpassed depression significantly. Of students who took the assessments from Alma counselors, 34% show depression as a top presenting issue, while 68% show anxiety as a top presenting issue.
Some correlation exists between loneliness and declining mental health. Often, symptoms of one can increase the potential for another. For example, if someone has social anxiety and worries about interacting with peers, they may opt not to leave their dorm at all, compounding the feeling of loneliness and also increasing depression.
Then there are typical, everyday barriers that can compound already existing concerns and stress. Students’ lives are full of pressures from parents, professors, and internalized demands about grades and jobs. “When there are obstacles people can’t overcome, sometimes they isolate instead of reaching out,” says Lambrecht.
Everyone hits roadblocks in life, big and small, but with the loneliness factor, regular challenges are amplified and more difficult to overcome. So, instead of moving past or through these barriers, people isolate further and become lonelier. Of course, caffeine, alcohol, tobacco, and other substances can impact mental health, which also connects to loneliness.
“When you’ve been isolated,” says Lambrecht, “It can be hard to re-enter.” In my four years working in the college’s spiritual life office, I’ve seen a resistance to students engaging in events, and no one has a clear answer for why.
Loneliness affects more than just Alma students. A 2024 Active Minds and Timely Care report noted that two-thirds of students in college identify as lonely. Students report that isolation from the pandemic isn’t directly affecting them anymore, but I can’t help but wonder if the aftermath of isolating in quarantine affects all our interpersonal skills. Lambrecht notes that the third and fourth top presenting issues for Alma students include interpersonal relationships and relationship problems. This makes me wonder if part of the issue is the loss of social skills during quarantine.
Lambrecht also cites social media as playing a role in atrophied social skills, loneliness and poor self-worth. While online communities can offer meaning, when we only interact with a device, we don’t use our interpersonal skills, and often we begin comparing ourselves with the people we see on the screen.
The way forward, according to Lambrecht, emphasizes emotional literacy, communication and teaching conflict resolution. Those connected with college students can help them have a deeper understanding of our emotions, how to name them, how to sit with them, and how to move through them. These are all vital steps in developing interpersonal relationships. Learning how to communicate and understand the perspective of others helps us repair and maintain relationships.
Some people may need professional help to guide them in the development of these skills. Yet, with or without expert advice, the only way to cultivate these skills is practice: going out, exposing one’s self to community, learning and trying again. As I listened to Lambrecht, I wondered if churches can be a space for these skills to be developed, for all people who are recovering from the social impact of the pandemic.
The church can be a brave space to allow people to gather, remembering that we’re all trying, and to offer some grace, community, and love. However, in my experience, encouraging students to go off campus to a church is almost as difficult as it is to convince church members to leave the church building! I’ve found neutral spaces like coffee shops to be the best place for gatherings, slightly outside of people’s comfort zones, to try something new.
At Alma, we’ve had success in a weekly knitting and crocheting group that has met over a common crafting interest. People from the church and students gather in one place with no agenda but to craft. Stories are shared, and connections are made. In these spaces, we can begin to rebuild relationships and perhaps decrease loneliness for all people.
