Shelby Dickerson’s experiences with mental health as a college student informs the way she teaches and communicates with students as a chemistry lecturer at the University of Georgia.
When she was a graduate student at the University of South Carolina, she had a sympathetic instructor who directed her to campus resources, but she didn’t think they were supportive.
Dickerson looked at outside resources, but couldn’t afford them.
“I just didn’t have a choice,” she said. “I just had to get through it.”
That’s one of the reasons why Dickerson took advantage of a new UGA program, Well-Being by Design, that launched in the 2025-2026 academic year. The program, created by the Center for Teaching & Learning and UGA Student Affairs, provides teaching strategies, materials and other resources to positively impact their students’ well-being.
Professors are expected to incorporate the five strategies for Well-Being by Design: syllabus statement on student well-being, five minutes of slides, growth mindset reminders, student learning groups and mid-semester check-ins. She does weekly check-ins with her students through slides.
“There’s three slides a week,” Dickerson said. “One is a question of the day, the second is a campus resource they might not be aware of, and the third one is just some sort of mindfulness suggestion.”
That program was voluntary for professors. But all syllabi from the University of Georgia are required to have a section titled “Mental Health and Wellness Resources” that students can view during the semester. The Student Government Association in February 2019 brought a proposal for professors to include a mandatory statement on their master syllabi that provides on-campus mental health resources.
Despite this inclusion, students are divided on whether a positive impact on their overall well-being has noticeably increased.
A short, anonymous online survey administered for this story in the fall 2025 and spring 2026 semesters shows that although 95.6% of respondents have been told where to find mental health resources in class, many don’t think their mental health is actually taken seriously by their professors.
“From my experience, many of my professors who are a bit younger tend to take their student’s mental health seriously because they are more open to having those conversations, as compared to older professors which in turn makes it seem like they don’t take mental health seriously,” one respondent said.
“I’ve had several professors that made sure to let us know that exceptions can be made if we are struggling mentally, stress resources — but I’ve also heard of professors who dismiss mental health,” another respondent said.
Jordan Wyatt, a 21-year-old psychology major at UGA, said she believes the addition of mental health resources doesn’t feel sincere.
“A lot of professors will include (mental health) resources in the syllabus. But I also think it’s easy to overlook because it feels generic,” Wyatt said. “After you see them so many times in this professor’s syllabus and that professor’s syllabus, it almost feels like maybe (it’s) something that was just copy and pasted.”
This lack of sincerity even led a student, according to the survey responses, to drop one of their classes one semester. Despite there being a section in the professor’s syllabus that mentioned where students could find wellness resources, the professor told the class that they didn’t take mental health seriously.
“I actually dropped a class one semester specifically because the professor said on the first day that she did not take mental health seriously and that, ‘This isn’t the class for you if you have accommodations through the DRC (now the Accessibility and Testing Center),’” one respondent wrote, adding that it was for a core requirement class.
According to the UGA Center for Teaching and Learning, as student well-being increases, so does their likelihood for academic success.
There are professors who play both roles to their students — being a professor and a therapist despite not having training to be one.
“It’s very hard because you have to get the students focused off the class because they’re more worried about failing the class, that’s all they care about,” Dickerson said. “What is important is your well being and that’s something we need to make sure we’re okay before we need to focus on a class. So that’s usually the struggle.”
The Healthy Minds Study has national data regarding the mental health of post-secondary students from across what it notes as “more than 675 colleges and universities.” The survey is administered by the Healthy Minds Network, a research organization that observes adolescent and young adult mental health.
An estimated 82% of respondents to the study agree to an extent that they have knowledge of campus resources at their respective universities for mental health.
Key findings from the 2024-2025 survey results indicate 38% of student respondents sought mental health therapy and/or counseling, and 61% with positive screenings for depression or anxiety sought therapy, counseling and/or psychiatric medication within the past year.
Although a large percentage of students are seeking mental health therapy and/or counseling nationwide, some students at UGA find it to be rather inaccessible.
Mental health care is a luxury afforded to those with a lot of privilege,” one respondent from the survey said.
One resource that has helped Wyatt manage her overall well-being on campus is the University Health Center’s wellness coaching sessions. These sessions are free to fee-paying UGA students.
“Freshman year, I did wellness coaching, and that kind of helped me. It was less so mental health help, because I was getting that from my therapist, but wellness coaching really helped (me) with getting a routine down and general wellness things,” Wyatt said.
While 36% of student respondents to the Healthy Minds Study agree with the perceived public stigma that “most people would think less of someone who has received mental health treatment,” 7% of respondents noted that they actually would.
Negative stigmas surrounding mental health are ultimately what stop people from having conversations about it, Wyatt said, especially within her own community.
“I think it affects a lot of people deeply,” said said. “From a Black woman’s perspective, I feel like it affects Black people a lot, but we often feel like we can’t speak about it, or we feel embarrassed to speak about it. And I think it’s important to kind of try to get rid of that mindset that it’s embarrassing or bad to speak on.”
UGA’s #BeWellUGA initiative promotes information and access to mental health resources available to all students directly from the school. These resources are what’s available to students and included in course syllabi. The #BeWellUGABlog is a subset of the #BeWellUGA initiative that regularly releases mental health-related news to the student body at large about campus activities and student organizations.
Dickerson said she’s still figuring out mental health in her role as a professor.
“Making sure there’s a barrier, like, these are their feelings, these are my feelings, and having that separation can be difficult,” Dickerson said. “Now, what I’ve just determined is making sure the students realize they’re more important than a class. So, it’s kind of continuously still shaping because I’m only in my third year here at this scale of what I teach, so I’m still shaping that a little bit.”
Sinta Halilu, Zaire Rushing-Simpson and Avice Smith produced this story as Fink Fellows in the University of Georgia’s Cox Institute.
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