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Impact of COVID-19: On December 7th, 2021, U.S. Surgeon General Vivek H. Murthy issued a public health advisory on the mental health challenges confronting youth. The advisory conveyed that symptoms of depression and anxiety had doubled during the pandemic, with 20 percent of youth experiencing anxiety symptoms and 25 percent experiencing depression symptoms (Love). Additionally, approximately one-third of college students reported feeling stressed because of the pandemic (Bamforth). These effects of the pandemic on students had been felt for nearly two years at this point, and had played a part in prompting the University of Michigan to take action in June 2021. After over a year of students experiencing a decline in mental health as a result of the pandemic, UM Counseling and Psychological Services (CAPS) announced their new platform, SilverCloud, an online tool providing students and faculty with access to mental health resources (Payne). CAPS Director Todd Sevig told the Michigan Daily that the goal of the new platform was to provide students with an alternative means of acquiring mental health services in the midst of quarantines and restrictions on offerings of standard in-person counseling (Payne). Even after quarantines were lifted, in-person schooling resumed, and life was seemingly back to normal. However, Michigan’s universities, along with others across the country, experienced increased demand from students for mental health services (Bamforth). Whether this can be attributed to long-term, post-traumatic effects of COVID-19 is yet to be definitively determined, but what is concrete is the fact that students have shown a need for an equal and often greater supply of mental health services post-pandemic than during the pandemic itself. Consequently, the coordinating body for Michigan’s 15 state universities partnered with online therapy provider Uwill (Bamforth). The then president of the Michigan Association of State Universities, Daniel Hurley, spoke out saying that online therapy provided just-in-time mental health services for students, meaning that online therapy offered a fast, efficient stream of supply of mental health services to accommodate the increased demand (Bamforth). In fact, students were often able to speak with a care provider the very day they signed up for Uwill (Bamforth).
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Miscellaneous Factors: The partnership with Uwill also comes as a result of new efforts by the University of Michigan to solidify their commitment to students’ mental health. The announcement of the partnership was made alongside the naming of a new chief behavioral health strategist, Kelcey Stratton, who was hired to form policies to improve mental health services as well as to place an emphasis on equity and inclusion in behavioral health care access (Dodge). Associate Vice President of Human Resources, Rich Holcomb, said that the chief behavioral health strategist position is critical for the university’s prioritization of mental health (Dodge). Another important factor at play here was private mental health care services being unaffordable for college students, an issue brought up by then executive director of the Wolverine Support Network, Isabel Steinberg (Anderson). Finally, one of the most important motivations for the digitization of mental health services was students expressing frustrations over the status quo of mental health services at the University of Michigan, including and especially excessive wait times for CAPS initial consultations and difficulty accessing specialized mental health resources (Anderson). Then Vice President of the Central Student Government, Jacqueline Hillman, said that she heard many such complaints from students regarding CAPS, and that a platform like Uwill would certainly go a long way to address the complaints as well as provide student groups who have historically struggled to access mental health services with more affordable, private access (Anderson).
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