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

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You're listening to the Modern Therapist 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 Widhelm and Katie Vernoy.

Welcome back, modern therapists. This is the Modern Therapist Survival Guide. I'm Curt Widhelm with Katie Vernoy, and this is the podcast for therapists about the things that go on in our practices, things that go on in 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 1,500 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.

Thank you so much for having me on the show. It's great to be back. 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? Wow. Who am I? My name is Pardis Mahdavi. I'm a medical anthropologist by training. I have my PhD in medical anthropology. And I guess the best way for me to describe myself, I'm an author. I've written 9 books. I've published 9 books. I've written 11. I am currently finishing 2 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 actually follows 4 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. Um, uh, 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. Spent 25 years in the academy, have held every major role that you can 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 3 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. Why did you leave higher education? 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, as we sit here today, 43 million Americans have started some form of college but dropped out. That's on us. 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 2/3 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 4 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, would 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 it, and it, 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 who had died by suicide or call families whose students were in, you know, in California, it's a 5150 hold. You know, so many students were having to be placed in crisis situation. There was 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 gotta be a better way.

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?

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, it's, this is 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 gonna be a lawyer. She's gonna be a lawyer someday. And my daughter's like, there's gonna 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. So there's so much changing. They see it, workforce sees it. But then when you get to universities, I remember for me, I would say, okay, look, 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 talk about that. We're not going to go there. And I'm like, but this is where society's going. And so 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.

It seems like there have been criticisms that are pretty similar that the current administration, the presidential administration, has been saying that higher education is broken. I mean, there's different things also, but it seems like there's been just a really big push to say higher education has to change.

Yeah. I mean, first of all, the cost. I think the cost question is a very real question. 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, up. Now there's a few different components to that. One is we probably need more public funding. 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 Mahdavi, I'm going into debt. Here I am, I'm spending 4 years at this university. I don't know if I'm gonna 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 4 years. They get an— 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 automotive factory. They get a degree, they have a job, they're paid. That's a model that's potentially more salient moving forward.

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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 been, the University of Montana, so the other one, but both being publics. And I, 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 pro— so I, you know, they were, they had courses in sustainable ranching, sustainable hunting. Now, obviously, if you're in California, you're like, why would you have, you know, 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, 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. Katie and I went to a different undergrad.

Very different. I was going to say that because I feel like 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.

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.

Good, good.

They did not lose the critical thinking. There was a really interesting program at Montana called the Franke 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, 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 challenging, but the curriculum needs to change. 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.

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.

That's a great way to put it, Curt.

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 changes that are necessary in order to stay up with the times?

I think there's a little bit of a push-pull right now. There's, I think that, 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 know what to do. 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 today, 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 are some things you can do. Here's a curriculum you can build. And this is what kind of what I, 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. Yeah. You see a problem, find the solution, figure it out, go Be in the world and, 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, and, and figuring out, you know, I've 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 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? Just to be able to say to a high school graduate, okay, 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 archaeology major. And today he's one of the most well-known underwater archaeologists in the world. But

again, that's so cool.

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, et cetera. 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 and 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 he was just, it's like that wasn't even on the radar. He was just thinking, I gotta go to a Division 1 school and play football. You know, doesn't matter which school. And, and so I said, okay, we can find you a Division 1 school that's really strong in international affairs. Like, we can do this. And it, 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 case when they get to college too. They get to college, there's all these courses. I think the advisors are doing their best, but to your point about, it's like I've been at institutions where it's 200 students to 1 advisor and the advisors say, I don't know what courses are being taught. I don't know what— 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.

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Whether you're planning a team training or a large-scale event, Curt and I deliver high-impact learning experiences tailored to your needs. Book us today. Visit therapyreimagined.com to learn more. 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 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 path and a purpose is amazing, but that's not where we are. Yeah. And that's not necessarily what students are facing. And so if we are 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.

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, 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—

Sure.

Going into masterminds after they've gone to college and had a career, et cetera. 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, um, I've been, I work with, uh, 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 3 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 3 microcredentials from these 3 institutions towards your degree and be working in this apprenticeship program because that quote unquote 4-year, I don't even know why we call it a, like, why is time a marker of merit? But the, because it's, why do we call the 4-year degree? We now have more people doing degrees not in 4 years than we do in 4 years. So, I don't know why we say the traditional 4-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 is like, we're gonna go, we go live at Oxy for 4 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, it's just that society has— I feel old though. 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, you know, 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 4-year college. That's it. That's not the approach that's going to work in today's day and age.

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 enrollments 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?

I think it's absolutely possible. And I'll tell you why, because you do have some institutions that are intentionally leaning into creating these spaces. And I will say one of the really positive things is that it used to be, and if we had this conversation 5 years ago, I would say, well, what donor is going to give money? Because so much of this is donor-driven. And 5 years ago, I might say to you, you know, Curt, what donor's gonna 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, 3 classes a week, you get credit for this, that, 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 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 3 kids. So, you know, they're, and they're ages 9, 12, and 14. And we meditate for 20 minutes every morning at 6:00 AM. 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 5 or 6 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 I think that, I think 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, 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 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 go to the help center, call somebody? And he said, I'd had my therapy session Monday. This was now a Thursday and I didn't have another session for another 10 days. And 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.

Before we close up this part of the conversation, 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?

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 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, your, 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 their parents are upset, et cetera. 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 didn't know I was, I didn't, I thought I was the only one who gets so distressed around mid-April. And I would've 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?

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?

I'd love that. Yeah. So my website, it's just www.pardismahdavi.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.mahdavi@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.

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 Widhelm with Katie Vernoy and Dr. Pardis Mahdavi.

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