New investments in mental health and well-being

To our Terrapin Community,

At the University of Maryland, we are fearless. We are proud to be a Do Good campus. We are scholars, discoverers and life-long learners. Perhaps most importantly, we are a connected community of care dedicated to supporting each other—Terps take care of Terps.

It is this commitment to investing in our people and communities—a cornerstone of our strategic plan—that drives the significant investments our university has made in mental health and well-being. These efforts are designed to empower every member of our community to prioritize their well-being and thrive in a supportive environment.

A new mental health resource guide

We are pleased to share a new online resource for our undergraduate and graduate students, faculty, staff, and parents and families. The new mental health website is a collection of mental health and well-being resources available to our community on a variety of topics, including crisis support, counseling, academics, wellness and connection. We encourage you to bookmark the website for yourself, and share with others.

Our strengths

For more than a year, a Mental Health Task Force, made up of students, faculty and staff from across campus, has been working diligently and thoroughly to understand our strengths and identify areas for improvement when it comes to supporting the mental health and well-being of our community. Overall, they found that UMD has a wide array of existing mental health and well-being programs, services and resources already underway—and we have made significant strides in this area.

We will continue to build on these strengths, capitalizing on existing infrastructure and programs and expanding communications to increase awareness, access and use.

Continuous improvement

We are committed to not just understanding where we stand, but taking action to become better. That's why over the past year, we've piloted or launched several new initiatives and resources with tremendous success. Some of those include:

• Providing students with an online screening tool designed to give them more information about their mental health. The development of new mental health and well-being features in the UMD app is also underway.
• Increasing the number of counselors to offer more immediate support, including additional hires in the Counseling Center, and embedded clinicians in academic units. A new Wellness Ambassadors program in the Graduate School will offer peer-to-peer mental health and well-being support.
• Supporting our faculty and staff with expanded counseling services, wellness programs, and professional development opportunities, including a summer workshop to help faculty design syllabi promoting well-being for themselves and their students.
• Implementing programs to support students as they transition to college life, such as the RADical Health Resilience Program, a four-week program designed to equip young adults, particularly first-year college students, with resilience and coping skills.

We would like to extend our most sincere gratitude to all members of our community who have invested time and resources into improving our mental health and well-being support on campus. In particular the members of the Mental Health Task Force who committed themselves to the betterment of our community, with a special thanks to Warren Kelley, senior associate vice president for the Division of Student Affairs, and Boris Lushniak, dean of the School of Public Health, for their leadership of the task force.

Every member of our Terp community chose to be here—whether it's to learn, teach or work—and that means being part of a community that looks out for one another. Thank you for being a Terp who takes care of Terps!

Sincerely,