steve marcus
Project Wellness faculty advisor Professor Daniel Babb, Provost Jose Llanes, and Vice Provost Lauren Morgan will be interviewed at UNLV on Tuesday, February 13, 2024.
Sunday, February 18, 2024 | 2am
Every time Joe Lanez hears the sound of police sirens, he can’t help but remember the helpless feeling of sheltering in place while an active shooter terrorized the campus.
In the December 6th shooting incident, three professors lost their lives and four others were seriously injured inside Beam Hall. Beam Hall was the same building where Mr. Llanes was taking an organic chemistry class during the riots.
A few days after the shooting, Llanes said she started shaking when she heard emergency vehicles. He wasn’t alone.
Since last summer, Linnes, 20, has led UNLV’s peer-to-peer mental health group, Project Wellness, and after the shooting, sought out on-campus resources his group was known to provide. I have been contacted by several students.
He said Project Wellness has helped Llanes and many others overcome the pain of surviving a mass shooting. The program has received national attention.
“When people come up to me and say, “I can’t even look at the building without crying,” and when a man was killed on those stairs, they say, “Wow, I would walk up those stairs.” ‘I take the stairs to my organic chemistry class every day,’ Llanes said. “The fact that I can go out of my way makes me feel the same way. I’m going to climb that staircase too. And everything will be fine. Not only can I get up and deal with things, It’s so important to have someone to help you.”
The idea to strengthen on-campus mental health resources came to fruition during the university’s Mental Health Town Hall, which convened approximately 30 nonprofit organizations in the wellness field in Las Vegas in fall 2022. City officials indicated the need, and student leaders began coordinating with the university.
By April 2023, Project Wellness will be created to serve as a “hub for all resources on campus” related to student health, Lanez said.
Mr. Llanes leads a team of six directors, three of whom also serve as chairs of the International and Transfer Students, Mental Health and Fitness Committee. The organization has gained more than 700 members since its inception, said Daniel Babb, a professor in the UNLV Honors College and an advisor to the group.
The need for this group was evident long before the December tragedy.
Loren Morgan, vice president of Project Wellness, said the group was stocking up on flyers for the fall’s “Level Ready” back-to-school resource fair. By the end of the day, the pile of flyers, including all the extras, was gone.
Nevada Beta of Alpha Epsilon Delta, UNLV’s pre-professional honor society chapter for students majoring in the health care field, was quick to join as well. Llanes said the group reached out to about 60 students overnight asking how they could participate. Morgan said there are no requirements to participate in Project Wellness and students can participate if they wish.
Although the executive committee is trained in areas such as suicide prevention, students do not have the authority to medically diagnose others or prescribe prescriptions.
The agency said UNLV already had several different health resources for students and staff. We also have a student health center, counseling and psychological services, a faculty and staff treatment center, and even an on-campus pharmacy.
Babb said that not having a central location for all these medical resources on campus can make it difficult for students to know about it, so she believes in destigmatizing mental health and using existing services on campus. Project Wellness’s job is to promote this. This group fills a void that many other schools lack.
“Why do universities exist? We work with students to challenge them intellectually, develop their minds, expose them to different concepts, different ideas, and help them go out into the world and apply them. “I’m trying to do that,” Babu said, explaining that he was studying excellence. Mental health issues among students across the country and the lack of resources to support them. “So how can we do that effectively when we have campuses where students don’t feel comfortable learning because there is such a pervasive fear of mass shootings or any kind of violent incident?
“Not only does this country need to have a very serious conversation about mental health, but it needs to put resources behind it. We are still woefully lacking in what we need.”
Signs of psychological distress were visible among students at all levels even before the COVID-19 pandemic, and have since worsened.
The 2023 State of Higher Education Report, conducted by Gallup and the Lumina Foundation, found that more students are considering “dropping out” of their college programs in 2022 than in the previous year. Approximately 41% of the 6,008 students surveyed said it would be “very difficult” or “difficult” to remain enrolled, with 36% pursuing a bachelor’s degree and 44% pursuing an associate’s degree. He was a student aiming to obtain a degree.
Studies have shown that Hispanic, black, and male students are more likely than other students to consider dropping out of classes.
What are the top two reasons students leave university? The report found emotional stress and personal mental health reasons.
More than half of survey respondents who considered quitting their job reported mental stress as a reason for considering leaving their job.
Just last spring, the American College Health Association’s National College Health Assessment (a nationally recognized student health survey) found that more than half of the 78,024 respondents were experiencing “moderate psychological distress.” There was found. Women most often reported feeling moderately stressed, and transgender and gender nonconforming students said they frequently experienced “severe psychological distress.”
Emotional stress isn’t limited to academics and can be caused by a variety of factors, Babb says.
He explained that students may be having problems with their home life or finances, or may be worried about their future.
Babb also said that while many campuses across the country have mental health and counseling units, they often lack the support or funding to adequately expand services.
That’s why he wants to start a national conversation about student mental health, especially as more college students face feelings of anxiety, mental distress, economic instability and mass shootings. Noda.
Project Wellness is working with UNLV’s institutional accreditor, the Northwest Commission on Colleges and Universities (NWCCU), to see if the program is effective and can be created at other schools, Babb said. And some members of the board intend to do just that, he said. He said.
Last semester, Babu met NWCCU President and CEO Sonny Ramaswamy while helping the university with its accreditation. He discussed Project Wellness with Babb and considered it a “possible model” for similar organizations on other campuses.
NWCCU plans to meet with students such as Babb and Llanes in the coming months to discuss aspects of the program, and the group will travel to Seattle to attend the NWCCU national conference in November, including students’ use of the program. We plan to present data on this area.
Even though the program is less than a year old and its members are still recovering from surviving a mass shooting in December, the group’s leaders believe that Project Wellness is growing conversations about mental health on college campuses across the country. I believe that it will be an opportunity for you.
“This is not just a problem at UNLV. How many other universities across the country have the same problem?” Llanes said. “If mental health wasn’t a big issue, NWCCU wouldn’t be saying, ‘Please come with us this November.’ This is great news for us, but when you think about it, it’s important to shut up and say, ‘Come with us this November.’ There are a lot of people struggling.”
