Connecting Communities to Care: The Role of Libraries in Mental Health Information Access

From an Ithaka S+R Blog Post by Sage Love:

The mental health crisis across the United States is widespread, and it shows no signs of abating, with one in five adults experiencing mental illness each year. Among college students, the situation is even more pressing: approximately 60 percent of college students struggle with at least one mental health challenge. The Hope Center recently found that 44 percent of students reported experiencing clinical depression and/or anxiety. Further, 57 percent of students who stopped out without completing a credential before subsequently re-enrolling reported that they left college due to mental health issues. Around 50 percent of college students lack access to mental health care, while the majority of campus counseling centers are working at or over capacity–struggling to meet the high demand of student mental health needs due to limited resources, a shortage of mental health professionals, and budget cuts.

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The first phase of the Maximizing Public-Academic Library Partnerships project, funded by ECMC Foundation, explored how community college and public libraries currently promote basic needs resources and services on their websites, including what kinds of mental health information they provide. Through a comprehensive inventory analysis of library websites, we found that while public libraries prioritize connecting patrons and communities to mental health information and resources, such as social workers and crisis support, more robustly than community college libraries, they both provide vital mental health information on their websites.

Learn More, Read the Complete Post (approx. 2000 words)

Filed under: Academic Libraries, Libraries, News, Patrons and Users, Public Libraries