Jocelyn Walke
Fall 2024
Student mental health surveys at IU Indianapolis
There are a range of services offered through the health programs at IU Indianapolis.
Following IU Indianapolis's recent rebranding, the campus’s health and well-being services and programming are in need of a robust marketing plan. One of the campus’s goals is to “promote student wellness, safety, and mental well-being” - a goal now guiding students in this course to create a comprehensive health care marketing plan for a real product, service, or program. Students are given a semester to produce a real-life marketing plan informed by principles and concepts integral to health care marketing and the study of marketing as a whole.
Find more information on IU Indianapolis health services:
IU Indianapolis campus health services offer immunizations - a service that may be promoted with the use of a marketing plan.
CAPS (Counseling and Psychological Services) at IU Indianapolis provide mental health support for students online and in-person.
Our Mission
Counseling and psychological services (CAPS) at Indiana University Indianapolis fosters a supportive and inclusive environment for all students and staff by providing individual or group counseling, medication management, and mental health screenings to our diverse community.
While IU Indianapolis does have CAPS, Health and Wellness promotion, and Campus Health, we are also saturated with health organizations all around campus, specifically IU health which offers similar mental health services as well. CAPS benefits because there is no requirement for insurance or payment and our university community is able to schedule with us more efficiently than our competitors. Other health organizations across the Indianapolis area have access to more services and more mental health professionals. For example, IU health is able to do diagnostic services which means they are able to provide treatment for a specified mental health disorder and can prescribe medicine, give referrals, and recommend what the next medicinal step is. While CAPS may not be able to diagnose, we are able to provide students with much needed support quickly and allow them access to group setting therapy which will allow students to be around others experiencing similar situations. Students were asked to complete a survey regarding CAPS services. Most students stated that they had not used CAPS, and were only aware of services offered because of class syllabi. In order for CAPS to be successful students need incentive to take the surveys so that we can target students who may benefit from its services.
CAPs at Indiana University Indianapolis wants for students to be able to have more access to their services by sending out surveys sporadically during the semester to increase awareness of mental health issues and where they are able to seek help. By hosting a demonstration of our service, it’s important to show what we have to offer for students who may be struggling with mental health issues by having guests actively participate in sessions we offer. This demonstration would have activities like mock support groups where individuals are grouped up and asked questions to start sharing experiences and finding things in common amongst each other. Another would be an area where individuals learn about art therapy and journaling, for those who express emotions creatively and for everyone to try something new as well. One final example of the one of our staff from CAPs in a booth where you are able to ask questions about services offered, financials, and volunteer opportunities.
In the same sense as having a brand ambassador or spokes people, I believe CAPs could benefit from having people from on campus organizations participating in events and working with CAPS to promote community and spread awareness of local help for those struggling. CAPs could involve student athletes, fraternity’s and sorority’s, club presidents who incorporate CAPS core values into their practices and ensure that the students within their organization are aware of the access they have to our services if they are experiencing mental health issues.
When it comes to our target audience for our mental health surveys for CAPS, we are targeting all students at IU Indianapolis, but we do have standards on how we want these conducted, who is most at risk, and times were marketing may be more needed.
We want all IU Indianapolis students to take our surveys, but it's important that we limit that down and focus on certain groups at certain times throughout the school year. One group we must cater the survey too would be our male students at IU Indianapolis. It is more likely for a male student to be struggling with mental health and not reach out to CAPS or even their friends or family because of the stigma around men’s mental health. We need to ensure that these surveys are reaching the male audience, but also students of different races and cultures. We have a very diverse group of students at IU Indianapolis with many students from different cultures and backgrounds so its important that these students have optimal access to CAPS services in the case of discrimination or exclusion and give them a safe space to discuss these issues. One final group would be students who may be from out of state and do not have access to other mental health services that would otherwise be provided from a family doctor back at home.
Now that we have outlined specific groups who may be more at risk for needing services, a time where marketing and the surveys would be helpful would be around mid-terms and finals time. Students tend to be more stressed and anxious around these times and sending out emails about the survey, or emails about CAPS group session could incentivize a student to use CAPS.
With CAPS students surveys, we plan to:
- Raise awareness:
Conduct 10 workshops/ open group sessions that aims to reach at least 100 new students in total to inform them about CAPS services throughout the semester. We intend to:
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Send messages through IU Indianapolis text services with updates about time, location, and what to expect from the service
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Speak with professors across campus about mentioning our sessions, and advertise more heavily during finals and welcome week
- Involve students:
Train at least 25 new students within the first 5 weeks of the semester to provide support, guidance, and hospitality services at CAPS. We intend to
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Offer students $350 each semester they work with CAPS to help with a potential commute to campus and paying them for their time spent training and assisting students
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With CAPS sponsoring campus events, we could attend the job fairs and create an information center for students who may be interested in working with CAPS
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- Increase marketing:
Sending out a CAPS recap each week, announcing new services via email and on campus, and sponsoring campus events throughout the academic year. We intend to
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Expand media coverage and create accounts on social media that help spread awareness of our services
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CAPS will have tents outside of IU Indianapolis events, flyers in bathrooms and locker rooms, and overall destigmatize mental health conversations by way of marketing through events to reach the biggest audience
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Our
Social Media
CAPs at Indiana University Indianapolis will post content on Instagram sporadically 2-3 a day Monday-Friday. This content will be informational about the services we are offering (art therapy, open group sessions, individual sessions, events being hosted by CAPs, and when surveys will be coming out). We will make sure these post and stories on Instagram are able to measure student activity and provide opportunities for engagement to boost posts and our page. Instagram is the best option to communicate our message regarding services because of Instagram’s algorithm, ability to boost posts, and ensure our posts are gaining at least 100 student interactions a day. Using Instagram also students to directly message the organization, find up to date news about events, and also share the posts on their stories or with their friends. CAPs aim to reach all IU students with our posts but we plan to have our athletes, club president and members, and students working at and with CAPs to collaborate on post with us.
Facebook would be another valuable social media platform which we would plan to create a group that post less frequently (1-2 a day) Monday-Friday. The content will be similar to Instagram, but the reason Facebook would be valuable is because students are able to join Facebook groups and ours would be used as a safe place for students to engage with each other. Our Facebook profile would be more based on student engagement rather than spreading information meaning that the content we post less frequently about our events, our services offered, and our surveys. We want this post to reach IUI students who are unsure about the services and would use Facebook as means to talk to other students about their experience.
Budget
For our Public Relations budget, we are will be spending $500 a month and around $5,000 for the academic year. These cost can be contributed to one of our largest events that we will host each month which is our mock therapy experience in which every student on Indiana University Indianapolis campus can come to CAPS and participate in activities like open group sessions, art therapy, music therapy, and gain information about our program.
Our Social Media Budget will be around $1,500 each month and approximately $15,000 for the academic year. Each month, our 4 student sponsors such as the athletes, club presidents, fraternity and sorority presidents, and other students who have been chosen to represent our program will be paid for each event that they work. CAPs will also be sponsoring sport events and setting up tables at student fairs as way to being outreach on social media adn around campus as well.
Overall Evaluation
Metrics
CAPs at Indiana University Indianapolis will begin to send out surveys each month that collect information about each student’s mental health. It is important that we pay attention to our metrics in order to determine the effectiveness of our surveys. Some main things we will be looking for include:
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How many students are answering compared to the month before?
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Are students willing to submit the surveys and then meet with us?
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Do we see an increase in students visiting CAPs during mid-terms or finals?
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Are the questions we are asking through the survey helpful in spotting mental health crisis?
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If students are not responsive to surveys, how can we further incentivize the use of the surveys and reaching out to CAPS?
Tracking student use, student engagements, and students answers on the survey are important for this plan to be successful as it depends heavily on a student’s willingness to answer fully, and honestly. We can gain insight by reviewing before the next survey goes out to change questions, send to specific recipients who had seemed affected the month prior to and sending different surveys to those who are/ has used CAPS.
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Contingency
There are many things that could go wrong with online surveys. Some of our main concerns are as follows:
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What if a student relies on campus resources for online activity?
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Luckily, the surveys will be sent out via outlook and canvas messenger. Students will also be able to opt into texts that alert them when the survey is live and when the survey is about to close. The link to the survey will be available on our website everyday as well so even if a new survey has not been sent out, they are still able to submit a form to CAPS.
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Nationwide outages for canvas, outlook, duo, or CAPS website
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There is not much we can do to combat an outage except communicate to our students and staff that there will be a delay in survey deliveries and responses.
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Will students complete the survey if it is not required and there is no reward for completion?
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We believe that these surveys will be extremely useful for those who are scared to discuss their mental health or those who are unsure if their mental health is significant issue for them to receive CAPS services. We do not need for every student at IUI to complete the survey, nor do we expect it, but we do hope that those experiencing mental health issue will use the surveys to their advantage.
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If the students are active with the surveys and we get an influx in patient volume, do we have enough people to assist the students?
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We do have plenty of staff at the moment to work with students, we do have intentions to hire students who are looking for on campus work, or general experience in mental health services. We believe hiring students to help out with art therapy, group sessions, and set up for events would help other students feel included in our services and allows us to communicate the message that mental health affects everyone, and everyone in this community is willing to listen and help.
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Counselling and psychological services at Indiana University Indianapolis will conduct student evaluations throughout the semester where students submit a mental health survey. This service will ask questions related to coursework load, life outside of campus, and will allow students to express concerns about a friend, teacher, or environment. Student surveys would be helpful because reaching out to talk about mental health can be intimidating and could ultimately assist in advocating for those who may be scared to initiate the conversation.