Supporting your students mental health during public health emergencies

Hi, my name is Amin Azam. I'm a psychiatrist by training and at heart, a passionate educator of health professional students.

I work at three San Francisco Bay Area Health Science Universities and also at Osmosis. Today, I'd like to talk to you as fellow educators about managing your learner's mental health during times of distress and or crises.

I've got four key tips. Number one explicitly acknowledge that providing healthcare is stressful work.

It's important to make the implicit explicit by stating that and acknowledging that truth, none of us are immune to the psychological realities of providing health care to others.

And by owning that in role modeling it for our students, we declare to them that none of us are superhuman by acknowledging your own feelings uh to others.

You also create the space for them to own and share their feelings even if their feelings are not the same as yours. You are creating the space to acknowledge that talking about feelings is actually part of providing high quality health care to patients.

Number two, frequent check ins with students. You wouldn't be an educator if you didn't care about your students.

That part goes without saying at the same time when the stress is higher, that means that the visible dose of caring should be higher.

So that students see that you're you've got their backs. Additionally, demonstrating an increased attention to emotional wellbeing during stressful times is quite similar to focusing on the organ systems of patients chief concern.

So we should go to where the distress is, we should go where the signs and symptoms are and and unpackage that so that way we can provide appropriate treatment and recommendations.

Number three, highlight existing resources. Students may not always be aware of all the resources your program or school has.

So making students aware of them especially during times of crises is a really good idea. For example, do you have uh student health services?

Do you have a particular wellbeing office dedicated exclusively to their wellbeing? Are there student services resources that some students are aware of that others are not, do all of the above programs that I've mentioned have links to additional resources beyond your university that may be useful or helpful sources of information for our students.

Additionally, does your program have a near peer mentorship program or a big sibling program? This may be the first time your students are experiencing a particular distress or crisis.

But it is far from the first time that any of the people above them in the hierarchy or further along in the health professions experience continuum.

It's far from that first time for those individuals. So why not leverage this near peer uh network as ways of others who can offer advice?

Sometimes learners can hear advice from their near peers far more so than they came from us as seasoned veteran educators.

So let's take advantage of that near peer network to assure that it falls on receptive years. Number four, destigmatize mental illness and praise help seeking behaviors as signs of healthy health professionals.

What do I mean by that? Two things come to mind.

Number one, seeking help is a sign of strength, not of weakness. I like to tell my patients when you're crying, it means that we're te addressing your concerns.

So we wanna see that emotion come out. Secondly, role modeling, appropriate disclosure.

When appropriate, you have to make sure it's appropriate can help students see that none of us are immune to the challenges of being health professionals.

So for example, you may choose to disclose that you personally or loved ones or people in your life are family members who have had mental health illness or mental health concerns, who appropriately sought care and actually got better.

All right. So a quick recap to effectively manage your learner's mental health during times of distress and or crises.

Remember one explicitly acknowledge that providing health care to patients can be stressful work. Two check in extra frequently with students.

Three highlight local available resources and four destigmatize mental illness and praise help seeking behaviors as signs of healthy health professionals.

I hope that was helpful. If you don't have the resources you need at your school or if you have questions, please reach out to us at partnerships at osmosis.org.