0:00

0:41:04

The Crisis in College Mental Health: An Interview with Pardis Mahdavi, PhD

Apple Podcasts Stitcher Spotify Subscribe on Android Download Leave a Review Keep me updated!

The Crisis in College Mental Health: An Interview with Pardis Mahdavi, PhD

Curt Widhalm and Katie Vernoy talk with Pardis Mahdavi, PhD about the growing mental-health crisis among college students and how higher education must evolve to meet the changing needs of learners. Dr. Mahdavi shares her experiences as a university president and professor, exploring what’s broken in higher education, how systemic pressures create anxiety and depression, and what can be done to restore purpose, alignment, and wellbeing for students.

Transcript

Click here to scroll to the podcast transcript.

(Show notes provided in collaboration with Otter.ai and ChatGPT.)

About Our Guest: Pardis Mahdavi, PhD

Pardis Mahdavi is an author, educator, and entrepreneur. She has published seven non-fiction books and two edited volumes. She earned a BA from Occidental College, and two masters and a PhD from Columbia University. She is the author of the highly acclaimed Book of Queens: The True Story of the Middle Eastern Horsewomen Who Fought the War on Terror (Hachette Books 2023), Riding (Duke University Press, 2024), Hyphen (Bloomsbury 2021), Crossing the Gulf: Love and Family in Migrant Lives (Stanford University Press, 2016), From Trafficking to Terror (Routledge, 2016), Gridlock: Labor, Migration and Human Trafficking in Dubai (Stanford University Press, 2011) and Passionate Uprisings: Iran’s Sexual Revolution (Stanford University Press, 2008).

Her work has appeared in, among others, Time, Ms. Magazine, Huffington Post, the Los Angeles Times, and the Washington Post. Mahdavi is an expert on human rights and education policy. Before stepping down from academia to found Entheon Journeys, she served as President at the University of La Verne, Provost and Executive Vice President at the University of Montana, as well as Dean at Arizona State University and the University of Denver after serving in multiple roles at Pomona College. She is a lifetime member of the Council on Foreign Relations and Young President’s Organization and has been a fellow at the Social Sciences Research Council, the American Council on Learned Societies, Google Ideas, and the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars. Mahdavi is on the board of directors for the Lumina Foundation, the Human Trafficking Legal Center, and the Global Religion Advisory Board.

She currently lives in Arizona where she is working on her debut novel, Bad Trip Good, a grounded but soulful ride through the trippy world of sex, psychedelics, and expanded consciousness with three spiritual gangsters seeking to escape a world in turmoil. She loves yoga, breakdancing, and aerial silks. When not writing, coaching, or giving keynotes, you can find her upside down, traveling the world, or a combination of both.

In this podcast episode: Addressing the Mental-Health Crisis in Higher Education

Curt and Katie sit down with Pardis Mahdavi, PhD, to discuss the misalignment between higher education and the real-world needs of today’s students. They explore how systemic issues like affordability, outdated curricula, and lack of purpose contribute to anxiety and burnout—and what universities and therapists can do to better support this generation.

Key Takeaways for Therapists Supporting College Students

“I had so many students in mental-health crises—I was having to award posthumous degrees to students who died by suicide… There’s a very real crisis: students are experiencing high levels of anxiety and depression.” — Pardis Mahdavi, PhD

The biggest drivers are systemic: cost, debt pressure, unclear pathways to meaningful work, and a curriculum that often lags behind workforce realities (e.g., AI).
Advising and counseling capacity are overwhelmed; students need coaching, mentorship, and purpose alignment alongside therapy.
Preventive supports—mindfulness, meditation, and intentional community—work best when woven into curricula, not offered as optional add-ons.
Therapists can validate uncertainty, help clients articulate meaning/purpose, and encourage collaborative bridges between counseling centers and academic leadership.

“Don’t underestimate how much the uncertainty is weighing on them—Will I be able to get a job? Will I be able to pay back my debt, my loan?…It’s hard for them to come forward with all the complexity that they’re experiencing, and it takes time. It takes time for them to unpack all of that. — Pardis Mahdavi, PhD

Resources on Mental Health and Higher Education

Pardis’ website: pardismahdavi.com
The Book of Queens (Hachette Books, 2023)
Riding (Duke University Press, 2024)
Hyphen (Bloomsbury, 2021)
Entheon Journeys

Relevant Episodes of MTSG Podcast

Meet the Hosts: Curt Widhalm & Katie Vernoy

Curt Widhalm, LMFT

Curt Widhalm is in private practice in the Los Angeles area. He is the cofounder of the Therapy Reimagined conference, an Adjunct Professor at Pepperdine University and CSUN, a former Subject Matter Expert for the California Board of Behavioral Sciences, former CFO of the California Association of Marriage and Family Therapists, and a loving husband and father. He is 1/2 great person, 1/2 provocateur, and 1/2 geek, in that order. He dabbles in the dark art of making “dad jokes” and usually has a half-empty cup of coffee somewhere nearby. Learn more at: http://www.curtwidhalm.com

Katie Vernoy, LMFT

Katie Vernoy is a Licensed Marriage and Family Therapist, coach, and consultant supporting leaders, visionaries, executives, and helping professionals to create sustainable careers. Katie, with Curt, has developed workshops and a conference, Therapy Reimagined, to support therapists navigating through the modern challenges of this profession. Katie is also a former President of the California Association of Marriage and Family Therapists. In her spare time, Katie is secretly siphoning off Curt’s youthful energy, so that she can take over the world. Learn more at: http://www.katievernoy.com

A Quick Note:

Our opinions are our own. We are only speaking for ourselves – except when we speak for each other, or over each other. We’re working on it.

Our guests are also only speaking for themselves and have their own opinions. We aren’t trying to take their voice, and no one speaks for us either. Mostly because they don’t want to, but hey.

Join the Modern Therapist Community:

Linktree

Patreon | Buy Me A Coffee

Podcast Homepage | Therapy Reimagined Homepage

Facebook | Facebook Group | Instagram | YouTube

Consultation services with Curt Widhalm or Katie Vernoy:

The Fifty-Minute Hour

Connect with the Modern Therapist Community:

Our Facebook Group – The Modern Therapists Group

Modern Therapist’s Survival Guide Creative Credits:

Voice Over by DW McCann https://www.facebook.com/McCannDW/

Music by Crystal Grooms Mangano https://groomsymusic.com/

Transcript for this episode of the Modern Therapist’s Survival Guide podcast (Autogenerated):

Transcripts do not include advertisements just a reference to the advertising break (as such timing does not account for advertisements)

… 0:00
(Opening Advertisement)

Announcer 0:00
You’re listening to the Modern Therapist’s Survival Guide, where therapists live, breathe and practice as human beings. To support you as a whole person and a therapist, here are your hosts, Curt Widhalm and Katie Vernoy.

Curt Widhalm 0:13
Welcome back, modern therapists. This is Modern Therapist’s Survival Guide. I’m Curt Widhalm with Katie Vernoy, and this is the podcast for therapists about the things go on in our practices, things that go on in the mental health world. And there has been a kind of a crisis going on in the last several years around mental health and college students. Katie and I have worked on lobbying for some things in California that would increase the number of counselors and therapists available to college students that would, I think the bills that we worked on would make it to where there was one therapist for every 1500 students that were on a campus, and when we did the math, that would translate to caseloads of about 120 students per therapist. So the world for mental health and college students has been something that Katie and I have been working on for a while, and it’s always helpful when we have our friends come on to help us further some of these conversations, and we are joined once again, by our good friend, Dr. Pardis Mahdavi, who has worked in a variety of positions across a number of different universities and being able to share some of her perspectives on what’s going on. So thank you very much for joining us and spending some time and helping further this conversation.

Dr. Pardis Mahdavi 1:31
Thank you so much for having me on the show. It’s great to be back.

Katie Vernoy 1:35
Yeah, we have a conversation that we had with you quite a while ago. We’ll put that in the show notes over at mtsgpodcast.com. But for folks that are hearing you for the first time, we’ll ask you the question we ask all our guests, which is, who are you and what are you putting out into the world?

Dr. Pardis Mahdavi 1:50
Wow. Who am I? My name is Pardis Madhavi. I’m a medical anthropologist by training and my PhD in medical anthropology, and I guess the best way for me to describe myself, I’m an author. I’ve written nine books. I’ve published nine books. I’ve written 11. I am currently finishing two fiction books. One is a young adult novel, and one is more of an adult novel. But the young adult novel is really focusing it’s actually follows four young people who are just between high school and college, and they’re in this their senior year at a boarding school that does not meet their needs, and they actually stumble upon a mystery school guarded by a herd of ancient horses. And that’s where they learn to listen to their intuition, to harness their powers and to figure out their pathway forward. And that’s really inspired by what so many of my students over the years did not feel that they received. I’m also right now the chief experience officer for something called the Bondery House, which is a friendship foundry. It’s basically an elevated consciousness community center where we help people to forge bonds and in a society plagued by loneliness, we help bring people together and show that community is a force multiplier. So that’s what I do today. But I’m also a recovering academic. I spent 25 years in the academy, have held every major role that you could hold on the academic side of the house. I’ve been professor, I was professor for 11 years, department chair. I’ve been dean at three different institutions, Pomona College, University of Denver, and I was dean at Arizona State University. I was provost at the University of Montana, and I was president at the University of La Verne. So definitely gave it the good college try, and got to see up close and personal, just the very real breakdowns in higher education.

Katie Vernoy 3:46
Why did you leave higher education?

Dr. Pardis Mahdavi 3:49
You know, that’s, it’s, it’s such a personal question in so many ways. And yet, I think it’s something that the more I talk to people, the more you know, I think my experience translates. It was a combination for me, of you know, the higher up I went, the more I felt misaligned. I, I was feeling, you know, that we were not necessarily meeting the needs of our students, regardless of the institution that we were at. Students were sleeping in their cars. People were taking out second and third mortgages just to be able to make it through school and yet, you know, as we sit here today, 43 million Americans star have started some form of college but dropped out. That’s that’s on us. You know, it’s the first time in American history where the generation that’s coming next will be less educated than the generation that came before them, their parents. It’s the first time in American history where more than two thirds of Americans believe college is not a good use of time, let alone money. And it’s the first time in American history that we’re not only not in the top 10, but not in the top 20 in global rankings of higher education. 13 years ago, we were ranked number four amongst OECD countries for higher education. Today we’re ranked 24. We were replaced by Vietnam. So something is very, very much broken. I was seeing it up close. I was seeing students, would, you know, say this is what we need. This is what we need, you know, in terms of translation of what they’re learning, to jobs, in terms of guidance, in terms of mental health support, you know, you had very real articulation of students saying, This is what we need. Over here, you had workforce and even sometimes parents saying, This is what we need, you know, workforce saying, This is how we need the students to be trained. This is what we need from you all, both of these sides. And actually there was a lot of linkages. But then you had higher ed in the middle, not doing anything at least that was kind of my experience, not changing as much, not keeping up with the changing needs. And for me, I felt that I was out of alignment. I felt that, and then I took it I took it on personally. My mental health began suffering. I had extreme levels of anxiety, which was mirroring my students. I had so many students in mental health crises. I was having to award posthumous degrees to students, you know, who died by suicide or call families whose, you know, students were in, you know, California, it’s a 5150 hold. You know, so many students were having to be, you know, placed in crisis situation. There’s a very real crisis that students were experiencing high levels of anxiety and depression. I was feeling high levels of anxiety and depression, and I thought, This isn’t something that I can continue to do, because I’m so out of alignment. There’s got to be a better way.

Curt Widhalm 6:39
What is it that, from your perspective, and kind of narrowing this piece down to the mental health piece of students, what is it that higher education is doing wrong or just seems to be completely missing.

Katie Vernoy 6:52
I think there’s a disconnect between what’s what’s being offered, what’s happening in those years, and then, you know, college is supposed to be that bridge, right? It’s that transition period for people to go from high school living with their parents to, you know, going out and being prepared for workforce, being prepared to be, you know, very educated, empowered citizenry. And what’s happening is that there’s just so much. First of all, workforce is changing very rapidly, right? Workforce is changing. You’ve got things like AI now, right? You’ve got AI has completely changed the landscape of workforce, you know, and young people, I have a 15 year old daughter, they’re up on the trends. They’re like, you know, it’s a great example. My daughter’s, you know, 15. She’s in high school. And, you know, my parents used to always say, Oh, she’s going to be a lawyer. She’s going to be a lawyer someday. And my daughter’s like, there’s going to be no needs for lawyers by the time I would be, you know, because AI will have replaced a lot of that, you know, same with accounting, you know. So there’s, there’s so much changing. They see it. Workforce sees it. But then when you get to universities, you know, I remember, for me, I would say, okay, look, you know, AI, what are we going to do? How are we going to start teaching with it? And people were like, No, we’re not going to, we’re not going to talk about that. We’re not going to go there. And I’m like, but, but this is where society is going. And so, you know, I just noticed a trend of, you know, society, and this is not, I don’t want to say this is the case for everywhere or everything, but there was a real disconnect between what was happening with workforce and society and what was being offered inside the college on the college campuses. It seemed to me a pretty sharp disconnect.

Katie Vernoy 8:40
It seems like there have been criticisms that are pretty similar, that the current administration, the Presidential Administration, has been saying that that higher education is broken. I mean, there’s different things also.

Dr. Pardis Mahdavi 8:40
Yeah.

Katie Vernoy 8:40
But it seems like there’s been just a really big push to say higher education has to change.

Dr. Pardis Mahdavi 9:04
Yeah. I mean, first of all, the cost. I think the cost question is a very real question. You know, I think it’s funny, I live in Arizona, and the Constitution of the State of Arizona has a provision in the constitution of the state that says college needs to be as close to free as possible. Okay, that’s like written in there, and yet, you have the major public institutions where the tuition has just gone up, up, up, up. Now there’s a few different components to that. One is, we probably need more public funding, I mean we need more state funding, right? Because so that tuition doesn’t have to go up. But there’s there’s complexity there, too. You know, you have people saying, well, we don’t want more state funding, because then the state will have control. On the other side, people will say, Well, maybe the state should have some checks and balances. Either way, what we’re getting is we’re getting to a place where college is not affordable for most people, and this is what I was observing. The number of students who are experiencing food insecurity or sleeping in their cars, crushing student debt. You know, one of the other challenges, of course, is students get ready, they go to college, and then suddenly they see the debt that they’re under. They feel the pressure. They feel the pressure from their families. You know, I had students who would say, I don’t think that this major is right for me, I don’t know that this, you know, I think maybe I should transfer, but I’m afraid my parents have given up so much for me to be here now, that suddenly adds to their mental health burden, right? The economics of it adds to the mental health burden. Sleeping in your car, it impacts your mental health. And then the very real anxiety that so many students would tell me about was, I don’t know if you know, they would say, you know, President Madhavi, I’m going into debt. Here I am. I’m spending four years at this university. I don’t know if I’m going to be able to get a job. That is a really serious weight for them to carry, you know, from a mental health perspective, and then not feeling like there was anyone that they could talk to about it. They didn’t want to let their families down, so they didn’t want to tell their families, and then, you know, they didn’t. So many times, people would say to me, we don’t feel that we’re being heard. We don’t feel we’re being heard when we say help us create pathways. Help us understand these next steps. Help us to weave our past into a future, help us to understand how what we’re studying translates to a job, you know? And I even would hear people say, Why not go to the European model of an apprenticeship? Why not have and you are seeing more of those pop up, right? You’ve got so many examples. GROB is one. In Ohio, they have an apprenticeship model. So, you know, a student graduates high school, they come to Ohio and then GROB pays them for their four years. They get a they partnered with a community college, so they get a Bachelor of Science in Engineering. They have hands on training at the factory. It’s an automated automotive factory. They get a degree. They have a job. They’re paid. That’s a model that’s potentially more salient moving forward.

… 12:04
(Advertisement Break)

Curt Widhalm 12:05
There are people who would hear what you just said and kind of assign some individual responsibility to students. Don’t go to college unless you have a plan for how your degree is going to end up in a career. What you’re speaking to, though, is more of kind of a systemic problem of higher education. I went to the other flagship school in Montana, Montana State, and I know one of my wonderful experiences there was during the transition where every academic degree program was moving towards having practical internships as part of the education, I think that, you know, the school’s really fantastic there, and I say that proudly as an alumni, and I think that that’s one way that systemically, institutions that are looking at this are doing a job of trying to get students out into the workforce with some practical skills to help build resumes. Is your sense that a lot of universities are doing that, or is this just a problem that is so already there that it’s just kind of difficult to steer the ship into such a different direction?

Dr. Pardis Mahdavi 13:15
You know, Curt, I’m glad you brought up that example, because my experience in Montana was very similar to yours. I will say, of the places I’ve ben the University of Montana, so the other one, but both being publics. And actually, I’m so glad you brought that up, Curt, because Montana is is unique in the sense that that is a state where 33% of the budget is coming from state funds. That’s, that’s pretty astounding, if you compare it to, for instance, Arizona State University, where it’s like 6% or maybe even less. Okay, so that’s already you’ve got a really great case study there. The University of Montana. Also, my experience there was, they were, it’s exactly what you’re saying. They were very interested in experiential learning. The other thing that Montana did, really, really well, is figure out, what does the state of Montana need? What do we need in terms of, so I you know, they had courses in sustainable ranching, sustainable hunting. Now, obviously, if you’re in California, you’re like, why would you have you? But this is the state of Montana, right? This is the state of Montana. They took a hard look at what is it that our state needs? University of Montana has one of the best College of Forestry and Conservation. That’s what that state needs, right? And a lot of that training is happening through experiential. They had students who got to go because University of Montana, unlike MSU, we, you know, we owned a forest. We had Lubrecht Experimental Forest, so students could come and experience a controlled burn. What does a controlled burn look like? We had wilderness medicine. EMT, wilderness EMT programs. Again, that’s what that state needed. So it’s actually, in many ways, it’s a model. And I think when we think about higher education, we think, well, whatever change is going to happen, or whatever innovation is going to come from the coasts. I, in my personal experience. I was, you know, I was in California for a long time. I was, you know, did all my graduate work in New York City. The most interesting changes that I see are coming from the middle. So states like Montana are doing exactly what you’re saying. I think that’s a great model, but it’s unique. I will say that to you. It’s unique that dedication to experiential and engaged learning, partnering with workforce. Montana also has a program called Accelerate Montana, where you can do micro badging, micro credentialing, and you can stack your certificates. Again, very forward looking, very forward thinking. That Katie and I went to a different undergrad.

Katie Vernoy 15:35
Very different. I was going to say that, because I feel like my my undergrad experience was really learning about diversity and advocacy and being able to be a citizen of the world and all of those things. And I feel like there’s a real pushback against that knowledge of how to think critically and how to kind of get those softer skills. I mean, I think there’s, there might be something lost if everything is so practical, like what you’re describing.

Dr. Pardis Mahdavi 16:02
Well, I think it’s a both and. And this is where I want to say, come back to Montana. Montana had that as a as a part of it, but they did not lose the critical thinking. I want to be really clear about that.

Katie Vernoy 16:02
Good, good.

Dr. Pardis Mahdavi 16:03
They did not lose the critical thinking. There was a really interesting program at Montana called the Frankie Global Leaders program, and they a lot of the same stuff you’re talking about Occidental. Katie and I went to Oxy and, you know, I was a diplomacy and world affairs major. I wouldn’t trade that for the world. I got to learn exactly what she’s saying: global leadership. And I think we were really lucky. We were really unique in the sense that, at least, I don’t know I was a diplomacy major for our junior year, they actually sent us to the United Nations in New York. So we got that hands on training. We got to be at the UN. And then, you know, then I was sent to the UN in Switzerland. I mean, I was really, really lucky because, and back then that was, that was happening, you know, for in a variety of ways, we’ve gotten away from that a little bit, I will say. I think that that that Oxy was rare. I think Montana was was rare. You know, you have programs, but they’re not the norm. So, for instance, at Oxy, being a diplomacy major, that’s what made allowed me to have that experience. But my friends who were econ majors, it’s not like their junior year, they got to go work at a bank. That was not the experience. Now Montana pairs, you know, a very strong Gen Ed curriculum, so you have that, those writing classes, the critical thinking, communication. Having that really strong base, but that can’t be all. Right, because, because, again, the world has changed. And to effectively teach how to be a citizen in the world you have to also be moving with the world. You have to have your pulse on the changes in the world. And that’s something I think, you know, can sometimes be lacking. And again, it’s challenging because people are working within financial constraints. You know, I empathize with a lot of leaders. It’s it’s challenging, but the curriculum needs to change. And in Montana, the state, because the state was so much of our budget, the state said, you need Gen Ed reform. Okay, we’re going to do that. We were really lucky in Montana. The state said something, we did it. But when I tried to do that in other roles, and I said, Listen, we need to think a little bit differently about our offerings and what is Gen Ed and all of that, there was a lot of pushback.

Curt Widhalm 18:32
Do you think that with the current political climate and the battles between what’s seen as a very liberal institution of higher education, which, in my experience of working in universities, it’s a conservative institution filled with maybe liberal people, but that’s a different conversation.

Dr. Pardis Mahdavi 18:52
That’s a great way to put it. Curt.

Curt Widhalm 18:55
But with the politics in America that are going on right now, whether it be national, whether it be state by state, do you see that this is even just going backwards right now? As far as some of the the changes that are necessary in order to stay up with the times?

Dr. Pardis Mahdavi 19:16
I think there’s, there’s a little bit of a push pull right now. There’s, I think, then, and there’s a lot of folks saying we don’t know what to do. I hear folks talk about it’s like a game of Whack a Mole. We don’t, we don’t know what to do. There’s, there’s, there’s push pull. And I think it’s also challenging, because you’ve had so many years of a system becoming entrenched in a certain way. And now, one of the things we often say is, like, antipathy is really easy. Proscription is really difficult. So what you know, to both of your points, what you’ve both said, as we’ve been talking to it, there’s a lot of critiques of higher education. There are, there are critiques. People say, as I’ve already mentioned, you know, the Gallup poll, it’s not a good use of time. People will say it’s not a good use of money. It’s too expensive. It’s not preparing for workforce. It’s not, it’s not, it’s not, it’s not. How often, though, do you hear: here’s some way to fix it, here’s some things you can do, here’s a curriculum you can build. And this is what kind of what I I felt that I needed to step down so that I could start to craft the response. Because if I just sat there and said, screaming into the wind, you know, the administration doesn’t understand us, the state doesn’t understand us. The faculty doesn’t understand us. It doesn’t you see a lot of that, right? You see people just being like, Ah, we’re not understood. There’s a lot of that. And and I thought, you know, I can’t just, I’ve never been that kind of person. I think potentially, because of where we went to undergrad, it was like problem, solution. You see a problem, find the solution, figure it out. Go be in the world and figure out what the solution is. And so for me, you know, I have really spent the last year enmeshing myself with entrepreneurs, with workforce, and figuring out, you know, I been a part of a lot of masterminds. When I was in the university setting, I didn’t even know what masterminds were. I didn’t even know people were masterminding. And now I realize, gosh, that’s a really good thing to port over into education; masterminding, skills development, skills matching. Take a young person who’s 18 or 17, figure out what they’re passionate about, and figure out what are some of the ways in which they can marry their love and their passion with what they could study and then what they could do. You know, I think one of the challenges I hear from people in high school a lot, they’re like, I don’t even know what to do. Where should I even go to school? I don’t even know what the landscape is. You know, do I go to college or not? Should I just get a job? There’s a lot of questions. And I think from for me, one of the things I’ve been really focusing on is, how do we build the roadmap? How do we start to help to do that translation, to be able to say to a high school graduate, okay, you What do you love? You love surfing and you love exploring and adventuring. You know, I had a student like that, and I had been working with him for many, many years. He turned out to go and become an underwater archeology major, and today he’s one of the most well known underwater archeologists in the world. But again,

Katie Vernoy 22:16
Cool.

Dr. Pardis Mahdavi 22:16
You have to be able to like, take passions, epistemologies, or bodies of knowledge, help them understand, okay, this is what you’re interested in. These are your these are the areas that you love. This is the area that you think about, etc. And then here are some of the things you can study, because they don’t even they’re like, Well, what does it mean to be a history major? What does it mean to be a political science major? And then from that, okay, here are the things you could do. Here are the careers you could have. You don’t have to lose your critical thinking or your DEI You don’t have to lose that. You just have to balance it a little bit more. Because right now, they don’t understand this is, I mean, I talked to a young person just this week whose parent was like, Hey, will you please talk to my son? He’s a junior in high school. He’s really into football. He just wants to go somewhere where they have d1 football. So I start talking to this young person, within 10 minutes, I’m like, Well, what do you love? And he’s like, you know, I’m part of this thing called, like, international World Leaders. And I’m like, Tell me more. He’s like, it’s a camp, and I’m the captain of the Toronto team. And I said, Well, have you thought about Model UN and and he was just, it’s like that wasn’t even on the radar. He was just thinking, I got to go to a division one school and play football. You know, doesn’t matter which school. And so I said, Okay, we can find you a division one school that’s really strong in international affairs, like we can do this. And it just completely shifted his orientation. He went from, you know, should I go to college or not, you know, to play d1 football, or should I actually just go get a football coach and get ready to go to the to the NFL Draft? He just, they couldn’t, they can’t necessarily see the path. And that’s the that’s the case when they get to college too. They get to college, there’s all these courses, you know, I think the advisors are doing their best. But to your point about you know, it’s like, I’ve been at institutions where it’s 200 students to one advisor, and the advisors say, I don’t know what courses are being taught. I don’t know what you know and the students feel lost. They feel lost. They feel that they can’t see that future, and that’s what leads to mental health issues.

… 24:21
(Advertisement Break)

Katie Vernoy 24:22
Well, and I was just thinking that there is so much benefit to mental health with knowing what your purpose and meaning are, finding really aligned work all of those things. That’s, that’s, that’s the stuff I work on with adults way after they’ve been through college and are kind of having that, what do I really want to be when I grow up, kind of moment? And so when I think about that, that even just doing that, and I’m not saying just because that’s a big lift, but even just doing the thing where you help align students with a a path and a purpose is amazing. But that’s not where we are, and that’s not necessarily what students are facing. And so if we’re looking specifically at the mental health support at colleges right now, at higher education right now, it seems like we’re kind of stuck a bit. What do therapists need to know about the kind of the mental health problems that are happening in higher education right now? Because it feels like this is a need that’s not being filled by college counselors. It’s not being filled by the folks who are are taking care of the students in higher education, because there’s just not the resources there.

Dr. Pardis Mahdavi 25:35
Yeah, so this, this is actually a fascinating conversation, because this is what I’ve been thinking a lot about. Obviously, as I mentioned, you know, with masterminds and all of that. To your point, Katie, we are in living in a society where a lot of people are coming into getting coaches and, you know, executive coaches and going into masterminds after they’ve gone to college and had a career, etc, and they’re, you know, the coaching industry is, you know, becoming a billion. You know, so many people have coaches, so many people are in masterminds. The thing that I’ve done in the last year that’s probably been the most rewarding thing I’ve done, is I’ve been, I work with a one mastermind in Arizona called Genius Network, and collectively, we’ve launched something called Genius Youth, and that’s for our Genius Network members to be able to send their kids, their kids, it’s basically ages 16 to 24 and we start working with young people, giving them all the great things that a mastermind does, pairing them up with mentors. You know, I have three mentees in that program. Having basically, having a 17 year old be able to have a coach, because, to your point, the college counselors, they’re not getting it. I think young people, you know, it’s always we all, we learn. You know, prevention, as a medical anthropologist, prevention is a lot easier and cheaper than treatment, right? And so I think that there is a space right now for young people to actually have coaches, not just college counselors, but coaches who say, hey, you know what? You don’t necessarily have to go to UCLA. You could come and stack three micro credentials from these three institutions towards your degree and be working in this apprenticeship program. Because that, quote, unquote, four year I don’t even know why we call it like, why is time a marker of merit? Because it’s why do we call the four year degree? We now have more people doing degrees, not in four years, than we do in four years. So I don’t know why we say the traditional four year degree. It’s no longer traditional, by the way, just for people to know. But that model of like, you know what Katie, what you and I did? It’s like, we’re gonna go, we go live at Oxy for four years. And you know that that’s, that’s antiquated. It doesn’t work anymore, you know? And we’re not that old. So it’s, no it’s just that societal…

Katie Vernoy 27:53
I feel old though.

Dr. Pardis Mahdavi 27:54
I feel old too, but, but society has accelerated rapidly, and there it’s a real shifting landscape, and the landscape shifts very quickly. And as a result, if you have a young person, if you have a high schooler, or a person who’s thinking about who dropped out and maybe wants to go back to college, get them a coach, send them to a mastermind, send them to somebody like me who’s seen it from all the different angles and can actually coach them to finding their purpose and then marrying that with the different kinds of programs out there. As opposed to saying, Here’s a college counselor, they’re going to fit you whether you’re square peg, round hole or not, they’re going to fit you into a four year college that’s it. That’s not the approach that’s going to work in today’s day and age.

Curt Widhalm 28:41
The description that I had heard from some of my colleagues in caps programs at various universities, in the University Counseling Centers, the trend for a very long time was described as their caseloads were building in complexity due to more students with already identified diagnosed mental illnesses were entering into college, and that was largely seen as a good thing as far as the accessibility of college over the last 20 years. When I’m hearing you talk there, the gap seems to be more in the the systemic pressures that the universities are creating in serving students, and it seems like every university is trying to increase enrollment and add in climbing walls, rather than bridging supports between academic advisors and mental health and kind of creating more of a cohesive global look even from within the university. With larger universities is it even possible to be able to bridge some of the gaps that are happening, or is it just such a compartmentalized behemoth of a process that it’s just going to continue to develop?

Dr. Pardis Mahdavi 29:56
I think it’s absolutely possible. And, and I’ll tell you why, because you do have some institutions that are, you know, intentionally leaning into creating these spaces. And I will say one of the really positive things is that it used to be, if we had this conversation five years ago, I would say, Well, what donor is going to give money? Because so much of this is donor driven, you know. And five years ago, I might say to you, you know, Curt, what donor is going to give money for this? But I think that there’s actually now, there are enough people who are either parents or people who are seeing, hey, there’s a real need. So at least that’s one positive development. What needs to happen now is it needs to be woven in. It needs to be institutionalized, meaning, instead of, we all know this, like, think, think about, think about the healthcare industry, right? Think about other industries where we would say, Well, yeah, we, we have a yoga studio. You know, people can go if they want, versus, you know, organizations like Google or Chase that say, Hey, if you go and, do, you know, three classes a week, you get credit for this, that, and the other or you can do these things you know during working hours. One of the things I’ve heard talked about that that I find really compelling is actually having mindfulness meditation be part of the curriculum. I do believe that in in my lifetime, I believe that when my daughter goes to college, she’s 15 now, but I believe that at least by her senior year, meditation will be part of her curriculum. I meditate every morning with my three kids. So you you know they’re and they’re ages 9, 12, and 14, and we meditate for 20 minutes every morning at 6am. It’s completely, profoundly changed the course of our lives, our relationship, all of that. I think that things like meditation and mindfulness need to be sutured into, like, woven into the curriculum, as opposed to being an afterthought, as opposed to, well, there’s a studio, you know, I remember one of the institutions I was at, I’m not going to name the name, but one of the institutions I was at had this beautiful wellness studio, mindfulness studio, and it happened to be right next to my office. And so every day, every single time I was in and out of my office, which was like five or six times a day, I would walk by that studio. And do you know that every single time I walked by it, it was empty, for a full year, and I thought to myself, look at this, there was a donor that generously gave us a gift. There’s this beautiful studio, nobody’s ever in there. So, you know, I think that, I think, you know, you talk about these large institutions, large institutions can also make large scale change. Just one small thing of saying, Hey, this is going to be mindfulness. Is going to be part of the curriculum. Hey, we’re going to build in meditation in some way, shape or form, or some kind of class on how you can actually start to work on your inner state, as opposed to always focusing on your external state. These are all tools that are going to help them, that’s then going to help therapists, because, to your point students, when by the time they get to the therapist’s office, there’s a whole bunch of things going on. How can we start to get and that’s, you know, best case scenario. I remember, I had a student who ended up in crisis, who ended up on a 72 hour hold, and I talked to him when he got out, and I said, Well, why didn’t you, you know, go to the Help Center, call somebody? And he said, You know, I’d had my therapy session Monday. This was now a Thursday, and I didn’t have another session for another 10 days. And, you know, Pardis I just couldn’t hold on for. And I get that. So having a daily practice is really, really important. Having a daily practice to help prevent you from getting to that place of crisis, having the tools, having classes that equip you with those tools and help you understand why. Those are all things we can do.

Katie Vernoy 33:40
Before we close up, this part of the conversation is, is there anything else that you think that therapists really need to know to be able to support students in higher education right now with adults that are in this stage of life?

Dr. Pardis Mahdavi 33:54
I think I would say, don’t underestimate how much the uncertainty is weighing on them. The uncertainty of, will I be able to get a job? Will I be able to pay back my debt, my loan? And, you know, I think a lot of them, it’s hard for them to come forward with all the complexity that they’re experiencing, and it takes time. It takes time for them to unpack all of that. So I would just say, you know, I think all the mental health practitioners I’ve ever met on college campuses are doing an incredible job. I think now it’s on the rest of us to help make your jobs a little easier and and I would also say, don’t hesitate to reach out to the people, you know, if you’re a mental health practitioner and you’re working with a college campus, let me just say to you, as a former president and dean, I wish you all would reach out to me more. I wish that I didn’t learn about these things when they were, when I had to call a parent and say your student is on a 5150. I wish I had a heads up earlier. I wish I knew that that person, that there was a student struggling, or I wish I knew, hey, we’re seeing a lot of students talking about this. You don’t have to tell me their names, but hey, we’re seeing a lot of anxiety around the war or this or that or the other, because then I can, we can then offer programming so that they know that they’re not alone. That’s the biggest thing, and that’s why I do what I do now, is because community is a force multiplier, just knowing that you’re not alone in having some anxiety about a situation that’s going on. I remember somebody saying to me once around tax season, a lot of our students get worried because our their parents are upset, etc. They don’t understand taxes are a black box, et cetera. So we did like a session on taxes, and people were like, coming on, they’re like, I know I was, I didn’t. I thought I was the only one who gets so distressed around mid April. And I would have never thought of that. It was a mental health practitioner who told me that. So I would just say, to the extent you can keep the lines of communication open and don’t ever worry like, Hey, you’re the dean, Hey, you’re the provost, you’re the president. I think all of us, I could you know, would always make time for you all, because we would much rather know what’s going on to help, support and prevent a crisis, as opposed to having to now say we’re in crisis, and how do we triage?

Curt Widhalm 36:22
Where can people find out more about you and all of the wonderful things that you’re doing, so people can reach out to you in this very way?

Dr. Pardis Mahdavi 36:30
I love that. Yeah, so my website, it’s just www.pardismidavi.com, I can send you a link. That’s the best way to reach out. And you can contact me through my website. You can email me. Very easy to find pardis.madhavi@gmail.com. And yeah, this is really my passion, is helping young people find their way and helping find a solution to this very real crisis around mental health on college campuses.

Curt Widhalm 36:59
And we will include a link to that in our show notes over at mtsgpodcast.com and follow us on our social media. Join our Facebook group, the Modern Therapist Group on Facebook to continue on with this conversation as well as others, and until next time, I’m Curt Widhalm with Katie Vernoy and Dr. Pardis Madhavi.

… 37:17
(Advertisement Break)

Announcer 37:17
Thank you for listening to the Modern Therapist’s Survival Guide. Learn more about who we are and what we do at mtsgpodcast.com. You can also join us on Facebook and Twitter, and please don’t forget to subscribe so you don’t miss any of our episodes.