“Let’s Lift You Up Rather Than Just Getting You Off the Ground”: A Transformative Qualitative Study of Community College Student Mental Health and Success

Background or Context: Mental health has become an increasingly significant priority for postsecondary education institutions, including community colleges that enroll a higher proportion of students of color, low-income students, older students, and those who work while attending college, all of whom may experience greater mental health challenges. Despite a growing body of work around this topic, much of the focus is on the issue’s prevalence and emergent initiatives. There is a pressing need for more holistic and asset-based empirical research that explores students’ knowledge and experiences in identifying the types of support necessary for their well-being and educational success. Purpose, Objective, Research Question, or Focus of Study: The study is aimed at elevating students’ strengths and knowledge in addressing social forces, barriers, and inequities toward enacting transformative change in supporting students’ educational journey and well-being. Engaging and collaborating with students from a Midwestern community college, we sought to capture their insights and experiences with various services and supports for mental health. Our research is guided by the following question: How do community college students’ knowledge and experiences illuminate ways to dismantle institutional barriers and build forward momentum for mental health and college success? Research Design: Grounded in a larger, transformative mixed methods project, our qualitative study drew on semistructured individual and focus group interviews with a total of 27 students from the research site. These interviews delved into student experiences, institutional structures and policies, and additional factors that intersect with mental health to identify what types of services and practices would best support students and their forward momentum. We use the model of momentum for community college student success to bring attention to mental health within holistic, intersecting contexts and domains underlying students’ educational journeys and success, along with the sociohistorical trauma-reducing framework to engage and collaborate with students’ experiences and agency toward healing and transformative change. These complementary frameworks allowed us to undertake our study with nuance and care, and in ways that center students’ knowledge and strengths throughout the research process. Conclusions or Recommendations: Our study reveals two major findings: First, the current college mental health resources, although helpful with minor challenges or crises, were largely surface level, limited in their potential to provide broad access and holistic support services for addressing the wide and deep range of students’ contexts and needs. Second, the larger institutional environment has not yet translated into educational spaces that are truly embracive of mental health in light of students’ backgrounds and beliefs that fuel hesitation. Institutions must continue the work they have started by recognizing and approaching mental health as an inseparable part of a whole that shapes students’ momentum and pathways within and beyond community college. In doing so, they can assess, address, and transform structures to ensure that students receive the critical empathy, care, and support needed to move forward and succeed.