Current Practices and Future Directions of Accommodating Students with Mental Health Needs in Higher Education Institutions
Young-Gyoung Kim
After having experienced Coronavirus pandemic, many people around the world started to face lots of new issues and to see outdated issues with different perspectives. One of them is mental health issues. This has been an issue for a long time, however, it started to impact our classroom in higher education institutions more severely. Therefore, the purpose the study is to present best practices of accommodating students with mental health needs in higher education institutions and to discuss how we can better accommodate these students via literature review. The author conducted literature review. The author mainly used database Eric, EBSCO, and Academic Search Ultimate using keywords accommodations, higher education institutions, mental health needs, and psychological issues. Any articles published before 2000 were excluded from the search. This review was more focused on accommodating students with mental health issues, rather than other disabilities. After generating about 15 articles related to this topic, the author conducted thematic analysis. Four themes were emerged via thematic analysis: 1) how faculty are responding and accommodating students with mental health issues in the classroom, 2) how universities are responding to this issue, 3) what students with mental health needs are experiencing in higher education institutions, & 4) how professionals discuss this issue. This study showed 1) many faculty feel limited resources and lack of understanding of accommodating students with mental health issues, 2) DSS (Disability Support Services) office has been offering same options of accommodations for students with mental health needs as other students with disabilities, 3) students with mental health issues often do not report to DSS or counseling services and 4) UDL (Universal Design for Learning) for students with mental health needs has been suggested in accommodating students with mental health needs. The meaning of UDL for students with mental health needs are discussed. This study will present implications to university faculty who want to accommodate students with mental health needs in the classroom more effectively. Additionally, higher education administrators will have better understanding of accommodating students with mental health issues in every aspects of their college lives via this study.
Kim, Y. (2022, May 13). Current Practices and Future Directions of Accommodating Students with Mental Health Needs in Higher Education Institutions [Paper]. International Conference on Global Diversity and Inclusion in Higher Education (ICGDI 2022), Clarion, Pennsylvania. https://harbor.klnpa.org/clarion/islandora/object/islandora%3A5435
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