Mental Health Care for Students During the COVID-19 Pandemic: A Year in the Student Counseling Room

2021/04/22

Photo: Hiyoshi Campus during closure (April 2020)

How has Keio University faced the COVID-19 pandemic, which has thrown the daily lives of all humanity into a whirlpool of confusion? I would like to report on the situation over the past year as glimpsed from the Student Counseling Room.

As of February last year, when infections were reported on a large cruise ship, COVID-19 still seemed like someone else's problem. However, it invaded our society in the blink of an eye. At Keio University, the March graduation ceremony was held online, and on April 7, the campuses were closed. Due to the nature of counseling, which is based on the principle of face-to-face consultation within the counseling room, our foundation for activities was stripped away.

The first things that crossed my mind were the current state of the student clients I had been interviewing until just the other day, and the students I had yet to meet who were likely bewildered by the new environment of the new school year. No matter how excellent the students gathered at Keio University are, not everyone can think rationally with a resilient spirit. Sometimes the brilliance of the "sun-drenched hills of Mita" casts a shadow that is twice as dark in one's heart. The Student Counseling Room conducts a total of over 4,000 interviews for approximately 1,000 students every year across the four campuses of Mita, Hiyoshi, Yagami, and Shiba-Kyoritsu, with about 200 applications in April alone. In the midst of this sudden emergency, the full-time staff devised "what we can do now" through daily emails and phone calls (at that time, we were not yet used to web meetings).

First, we created online materials titled "Message from a Counselor: About the Stress and Anxiety You Are Feeling Now" on our website, explaining that current anxieties are not unique to oneself, reviewing the situation objectively, and how to deal with stress, which we released on April 28. Additionally, from April 24, we began phone consultations on the limited days counselors could come to work. Initially, it was one day a week each at Mita and Hiyoshi, but as the number of consultations began to increase to the point where the phone rang every five minutes, we gradually increased the number of days, and by July, the rooms were open four days a week at Mita and Hiyoshi. Meanwhile, at the end of May, the university provided mobile phones so that counselors waiting at home could also conduct consultations, and from June onwards, full-scale operation of web consultations began. We also conducted consultations via international phone calls with international students who could not enter the country.

The most noteworthy content of student consultations was the distress and suffering associated with the shift to online classes. Some could not keep up with the heavy assignments on top of the large volume of learning per session, while others could not find meaning in learning through assignments that were too simple. Because many classes distribute on-demand materials that can be viewed at any time rather than at a fixed time, students would accumulate them without watching and become unable to move. Things that could normally be handled by students imitating each other's methods (or how to cut corners), complaining to each other, or consulting with faculty members became impossible. These problems were particularly prominent among new students, and the sense of blockage was severe as the campus life they had expected was suddenly cut off, they could not make friends, and there were no club activities. We also received voices from parents saying, "My child said they would drop out" or "They might commit suicide," which heightened our sense of crisis.

On the other hand, after June, we began to hear voices saying that new students were becoming able to grasp class patterns and their feelings were gradually settling down. As is often said, under this COVID-19 situation, as the shift to an online society progresses, we glimpsed a widening gap over time between those who experience maladaptation to that environment and worsening mental health, and those for whom it conversely serves as an opportunity to cut off difficult social relationships, leading to improved mental health.

It was not only the students who were bewildered by sudden online classes. Designing an educational environment in a situation where live sessions with students cannot be held—including how to use Zoom and Webex—had to start almost from scratch, as was the case for myself. Creating on-demand materials and responding to submitted assignments were repeated day after day, feeling like receiving a slow body blow. Above all, not knowing the students' reactions made the situation increasingly dark.

Before I knew it, the Student Counseling Room had become an intersection where both the raw voices of the students themselves regarding the problematic situation and the requests from faculty and authorities who wanted to hear those voices and reflect them in the improvement of the educational environment were gathered. Along with warm encouragement for our activities, the Vice-President in charge requested that we disseminate a summary of information regarding the problems faced by students. On June 10, we created web materials titled "To All Faculty and Staff: Collection of Materials for Responding to Students" and uploaded them to the website, and further had a summary of the detailed situation report informed to faculty through each Dean. It goes without saying that the report content followed specific cases as much as possible while ensuring personal information remained confidential.

From October, campuses were partially opened, and face-to-face classes for small groups and experiment/practical training classes began, so the Student Counseling Room also started face-to-face consultations on a limited basis. Guidelines for this were carefully created through weekly web meetings and daily email exchanges. I wonder how many emails were exchanged between staff members in a single day.

As an attempt made possible by the online environment, we held seven virtual student social gatherings called "Online Chat Session 2020" using Zoom. This event is a place where students meet across campuses, faculties, and school years, as well as across the locations where they live, and after loosening their minds and bodies with light stretching with a counselor, they talk freely about how everyone is spending their time. As it was the first year, the number of participants was not necessarily large, but it seems to have been well-received, with repeaters appearing, and we feel a sense of accomplishment.

As the uncertain situation enters its second year, it is expected that both student and faculty problems will become more apparent and entrenched. Student mental health is not a problem that can be solved by the Student Counseling Room alone. We must overcome this difficult situation by gathering the full strength of the Juku. (The online materials distributed by the Student Counseling Room introduced here can be viewed from the Student Counseling Room website: Student Counseling Room: Keio University Student Website)