PAW Reunions Panel: Is Student Mental Health a Crisis?

The 2024 PAW Reunions panel will be: Student Mental Health: Is it a Crisis, and What Can Be Done? It will be held from 2-3:30 p.m. Friday, May 24, in Thomas Laboratory, Room 3. The five panelists are:

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Lucy McBride ’95 M.D. (moderator) is a Harvard-trained primary care doctor in Washington, DC. She writes the popular medical newsletter, “Are You Okay?,” and is the author of a forthcoming book on whole-person health with Simon & Schuster. She hosts the Beyond the Prescription podcast. She has been published in The Atlantic, The Washington Post, and USA Today and has appeared on CNN, MSNBC, NPR, and PBS, advocating for a data-driven, patient-centered, holistic approach to health. You can find her at www.lucymcbride.com.

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Jeremy Nobel ’77 M.D., MPH, is a primary care physician, public health practitioner, and award-winning poet with faculty appointments at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health and the Harvard Medical School. He is the founder and president of the Foundation for Art & Healing (www.ArtandHealing.org), whose signature initiative — Project UnLonely, addressing the personal and public health challenges of loneliness and social isolation — has gained national visibility.

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Joshua Blum ’02, M.D. is the psychiatrist at Bucknell and Susquehanna Universities. At Princeton, he helped cofound the Sympoh urban arts dance group. A number of years later, he graduated from Penn State College of Medicine, with residency at UMass Memorial (adult psychiatry), and fellowship at Brown (child and adolescent psychiatry).

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Chioma Ugwonali ’24 majored in ecology and evolutionary biology with interests in environmental studies and global health. She was a residential college adviser, peer health adviser, civic engagement chair, Office of Campus Engagement fellow, and coordinator for community health and environmental justice projects. She served on the TigerWell Grant Selection Committee, Student Health Advisory Committee,and Mental Health Taskforce. She is applying to medical school this year. 

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Jess Deutsch ’91, EdM, LSW is an adviser, social worker, and writer who emphasizes purpose and well being in pursuit of higher education and professional paths. With masters in education (Harvard) and social work (Rutgers), she is a former administrator in student-athlete services and pre-health advising at Princeton, and she now writes “The Whole Student” for the Princeton Alumni Weekly.

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RESOURCES

For additional resources related to campus mental health, see these readings recommended and written by the panelists:

• The Anxious Generation, Jonathan Haidt
• Are You Okay? Medical Newsletter, Lucy McBride, MD 
• iGen: Jean Twenge
• The JED Foundation
• Project Unlonely: Healing the Crisis of Disconnection, Jeremy Nobel, MD, MPH 
• Surgeon General’s Report
• The Whole Student: Princeton Alumni Weekly
• NAMI Family Support Groups to find resources for families
• The Psychology Today database to find mental health professionals in your area
• Mental Health Coalition: A toolkit for college students
• The Hidden Opponent: Mental health advocacy for student-athletes
• NCAA Mental Health Resources: Sport Science Institute
• 988 Suicide & Crisis Lifeline

Information about Princeton’s Counseling and Psychological Services is online here. To find similar information about mental health resources at a particular institution, google “X university + counseling center” (X as the name of the institution), and you will generally find on-campus mental health resource available. If you are looking for psychiatric services specifically, they are sometimes located in the university’s student health centers.