Several years ago, I was working with US armed forces veterans on a project measuring their general wellness through a weekly online questionnaire. The idea was to help track their health and, if necessary, recommend seeing a doctor before their health deteriorated. However, many balked at completing the mental health section and abandoned the survey. The feedback I received was that participants didn’t want to be focused on how much anxiety and depression they had. They wanted a solution or, at the very least, to get something out of all this that would make them feel just a bit better. At the time, I found this surprising. It wasn’t until a few years ago when, through life events, I experienced some of these same symptoms that I realised that I, too, wanted not reminders but a solution.
That led to my co-founding Innsightful, a company dedicated to ensuring that college students and other highly stressed individuals have the knowhow to improve their mental health. We initially focused on students because young adults have been experiencing a significantly bigger increase in mental health problems than any other age group. To gauge need, we established an Instagram account where we posted eye-catching videos or images offering potted information and advice about different mental health conditions. Sometimes the content (lasting no more than a minute, to cater for super-short attention spans) focused purely on validating difficult feelings and assuring people that they were not alone. We quickly accrued over 100,000 followers, which gave us the perfect platform for sounding out high-school and college students about what they felt they needed to help them with their mental health. We also talked with over 90 university counselling centres to see what we could usefully offer that was complementary.
I had come across the human givens around 15 years earlier and its over-arching framework made a lot of sense to me. In the hundreds of experiments that we ran over two years, during which we tested many different types of therapy and whether students were willing to participate in a particular approach and allow it to work, we found that people responded most positively to the Emotional Needs Audit as a way to assess their own wellbeing.
We brought our initial results to Ivan Tyrrell, who introduced us to others at the HG College, and it was suggested that we provide the students with psychoeducation and focus on addressing their emotional needs. We came up with a 12-week programme that is delivered via facilitators, whom we refer to as wellness coaches, all of whom are required to study the human givens via the books and the materials available online. We plan soon to go further and bring in bespoke teaching from Human Givens College.
The programme, which is paid for by the universities and is free for students, is held online for one hour each week. In each session we focus on a specific topic that is important to students’ wellbeing within the framework of human givens. We also include a group chat facility, monitored by the coach, and private chats, whenever required, with the coach. The chat system asks the participants to fill out a short check-in form (taking less than one minute) once or twice a day to record their emotions. This allows them to become aware of the feelings they are having right at that moment, integral to developing their observing selves. So far we have run the programme at two universities, the University of Northern Colorado and University of Notre Dame in Indiana.
Practical value
In marketing the programme we make clear that students (a maximum of 10 on each) will be matched in groups that fit their profile and will gain much of practical value, with wellness coaches providing real-time and long-term coping strategies for their emotional wellbeing, in accordance with their needs.
Content is specifically geared to students’ interests. In Week 1, we fully explain emotional needs. Then, in the following weeks, we cover the importance of sleep and dreaming; the role of friendships and relationships in mental wellbeing; academic anxiety and emotional hijacking; social pressures; managing exam stress; social media; substance abuse; and other topics that are pertinent.
Having now run the programme four times, we have the evidence that it works. Even though symptom reduction was not our primary focus, after completing standard depression and anxiety measurements at the start and end of the programme, our first group showed symptom scores reduced by an astounding seven or eight points. Across all groups, participants reduced their levels of stress, anxiety and depression; felt supported, heard and understood; had increased feelings of belonging, emotional connection, motivation and engagement; and improved their academic outcomes. While some students did have to drop out, mostly because of scheduling conflicts around study or work, only a small minority of dropouts said that they thought in-person therapy was a better fit for their needs.
We have learned from feedback that we need to tailor the interaction to the dynamics of particular groups, matching the pace and tempo accordingly and giving everyone a chance to participate. The more interactive we make the programme, the more people engage. So, we do an ‘emotional intake’ at the start of each session, asking participants what they are feeling, and, when someone opens up about an issue, anyone can pitch in to give their own related experience or view before the coach offers something practical – and only if it is necessary.
Handling shyness
Not everyone is comfortable about opening up, of course; some students never put their cameras on, and some contribute very little. Foreign students, members of minority groups and those who are the first in their family to go to college are particularly vulnerable and many feel especially shy. One young woman never responded to my questions. I kept including her, asking if she had anything she wanted to contribute – not pushily but just so that she knew she had not been forgotten. Eventually she opened up when she heard someone else expressing the same personal concerns as she had. Some participants have kept their cameras off right until the last session – and then everyone was really happy to meet them! While our aim is to make people feel comfortable enough to engage, their choices are respected and not questioned – possibly, if it had been an in-person group, they would not have come at all. It is a nice side effect of these groups, where alienation or sense of isolation is common, that, after a while, members may choose to get together for meals and some become friends and regularly spend time together.
We encourage the coaches to give specific examples from their own lives. For instance, I say that I work from home and often like to do my work in a local coffee shop. It lets me be around others, who were often doing the same thing during the pandemic; sometimes I strike up a conversation and that meets my social needs.
Conversely, not enough privacy can be a big issue for some who find it hard to say no if they are asked to go out socially but need some alone time. Many have found it helpful to have this particular need validated.
Meaning and purpose is a particularly big issue for graduate students, who may often lose interest in their research. Doing a higher degree is not necessarily about pursuing a dream project, alas. Grant money is allocated for a certain amount of time and certain tasks, with a certain number of published papers expected. Choice of subject is dictated by what has a higher chance of being awarded a grant or fits into the framework already determined by a laboratory or department. We guide disheartened students to look beyond their immediate situation towards the higher values that drive them. Several students are surprised that they are not happy even though they have just finished what they have been working towards for the past several years – like submitting their masters or PhD thesis or getting a job. They feel that they should be happy and are disappointed that they are not. Enquiring into whether they are getting their needs met helpfully reveals that their achievement forms only a part of their overall wellbeing. We don’t impose solutions; it is about people coming to recognise what their own needs are and applying tools to meet them.
Many students may experience loss of control, so we explore what people can do to lessen the negative impact of a current situation. I have given the extreme example of someone in a Nazi concentration camp who was better able to survive because he took the tiniest piece of control he still could – control over when he would pass out.
Everyone can relate to the need for security. It is common, especially for graduate students, to develop imposter syndrome – they think they don’t belong or that they are not as smart as everyone else or don’t solve problems as quickly. They feel pressured to compete. We often guide them to look at whether others are truly as competitive as they imagine or whether they are the ones feeling competitive, because of their own insecurity.
Developing the programme
further Drawing on our experience so far, we now plan to alter our content to meet specific needs better and separate out graduate students from undergraduates. Graduate students’ needs are more to do with motivational issues and resilience building, whereas undergraduates may be grappling with getting used to being away from home, developing autonomy in learning and coping with exam pressure. We also plan to cover more on cross-cultural understanding, which many students are conscious that they lack. Finally, we plan to address the needs of first-generation university goers, who often don’t arrive with the skillset to succeed if they have come from poorer districts and schools with few curricular and extra-curricular opportunities.
Our aim ultimately is to offer our programme to thousands of students – we are talking to more universities all the time. We settled on the human givens because it works and lets us offer something highly cost effective. We already have proof of the huge difference it makes.
https://www.humangivens.com/
About Innsightful
Innsightful combines AI-based wearable technology and an advanced app to deliver immediate and long-term mental health management. The innovative wristband monitors anxiety and stress symptoms, providing personalized, real-time interventions through the Innsightful App. Designed by psychological health experts and trusted by top institutions, Innsightful offers a holistic approach to emotional wellness, making it a leader in personalized mental health solutions. For more information, please visit www.innsightful.com.