M E E T I N G    M I N U T E S
 

November 3 2004
Meeting Agenda
 
In attendance: Nicole, Dan, Thais, Erin, Deborah, Temina
 
OSL Registration for Student Group
Depression Screening Day
MHTF is tabling on Tuesday, Nov 9th from 9AM to 3PM.
Grad Mental Health Survey
April 29 2004
Meeting Agenda
 
In attendance: Karen, Nicole, Jenny, Dan, Brian, Temina
 
See the following documents for details of the discussion:
 
MHTF Planning for 2004-2005
Public Service Announcements
UCB Suicide Prevention
Outreach/Education Materials
Revenues for University Health Services: Past, Present, Future
 
April 22 2004
Meeting Agenda
 
In attendance: Andrea L., Karen E., Nicole B., Jenny H., Dan H., Brian Q., Temina M.
 
Grad Mental Health Survey: We reviewed preliminary results and agreed that we can send out one final (SHORT) reminder to non-respondents. Data will be analyzed over the summer; Brian and Jenny will present final report to UHS (and other administrators?) in Fall 2004.
 
Campus lecture series: Possible ideas for Fall 2004 lectures on mental health in academia include:
* Decal course (for credit)
* Chancellor: ask him to organize a lecture series in the interest of promoting mental health (particularly since we don't have a medical school/ major mental health research focus on campus)
* Partner the School of Public Health and/or Neuroscience with Grad Division, to host speakers on the neuroscience of stress & mental health
* Lobby for distinguished lecturers on mental health to be selected for existing campuswide lecture series (Dan has a list of the most appropriate lecture series for us to target...)

Proposal for Chancellor: Consensus is that we wait for the new chancellor to be selected, then present a comprehensive Mental Health Project proposal, including:
* Appointment of a Mental Health Administrative point person
* Funded, campuswide lecture series on mental health in academia
* A fund for improving campus education and climate
* A campuswide committee (comprised of faculty members, administrators, UHS staff, and G/UG students) to identify problems & make recommendations
* A fundraising campaign focused in improving student mental health.
Proposal should be drafted over the summer and forwarded by August 2004.
 
International Student concerns: MHTF should advise the Tang Center to advertise couples counseling to international students (since this is available to students with an unemployed/struggling spouse who might need help).
 
Insurance changes: Nicole reports that CPS will change its reimbursement procedures for outside referrals: rather than receiving up to $55/session for consultation with an off-campus psychologist, psychiatrist, or psychology trainee, students will receive 80% reimbursement for off-campus sessions with Blue Cross Network providers. PROS: network providers may be of good quality. CONS: their practices may be full. SOLUTION: CPS hopes to bring 30% of off-campus referrals in-house.
 
Outreach Campaign: Draft text is below. Send comments or ideas to taskforce@lists.berkeley.edu Final decisions will be made next week. TM will bring final designs for Nalgene & T-shirt; DW will bring final designs for the posters.
 
A: Nalgene text = Glass Always Half Empty? 80% of people seeking help for depression get better.
 
B: Poster #1: Real Men Don't Cry. But men are four times more likely to die from a suicide than women. Help take care of yourself. Take care of a friend. Etc.
 
C: Poster #2: Explaining your research to your advisor: 2 hours. Finishing your presentation the night before the conference: 14 hours. Getting the signatures you need on your thesis: 3 weeks. Your mental health: priceless Graduate school can cause stress and anxiety... take care of yourself. Take care of your friends. Etc.
 
D: Tshirt: got mental health? (front) depression is common among graduate students. talk to someone.
 

 
March 11 2004
Meeting Agenda
 
In attendance: Nicole, Jenny, Dan, Brian, Temina
 
Anecdotes: Stories of grad student mental health were collected into an anonymous report shared with administrators (UHS Vice Chancellor Steve Lustig, Chancellor Berdahl, Graduate Division Dean Mary Ann Mason, etc). We hope that those members of the administration who allocate resources will find the qualitative report compelling: it shows that Cal's graduate students clearly rely on UHS/SHIP counseling and psychiatric care to make the most of their careers at UC Berkeley.
 
UHS Budget: We revised and completed a letter to Chancellor Berdahl requesting roll-back of previous cuts to University Health Services, among other things. This letter was sent along with our qualititative report.
 
Outreach & Education: We focused on brainstorming for much of the evening. Concensus is to print up T-shirts with key statistics and information about mental health in academia; purchase Nalgene bottles with a "Glass Half Empty?" sticker; and distribute posters and/or bookmarks with information about depression, suicide prevention, and on-campus mental health resources.
 
Updates: At the UHS grad mental health advisory committee meeting tomorrow, we plan to discuss the UHS (and UC) Budget, the possibility of a campuswide forum on mental health, and an upcoming conference of Graduate Advisors/ Grad Assistants (at which Sue Bell, Diane Hill, and a panel of graduate students will make a presentation on mental health concerns of the grad population). The Academic Senate has not decided to form the subcommittee on Student Mental Health/ Welfare that we proposed; rather, they will encourage the Administration to convene a joint Task Force to begin data collection on student mental health needs...
 
February 26 2004
Meeting Agenda
 
In attendance: Nicole, Sara, Jenny, Brian, Dan, Temina (?)
 
Outreach & Education
 
Please send any one-liners, catch phrases, or mental health statistics to Dan (werker@socrates.berkeley.edu). We'll review these next week. The main goals of our outreach campaign:
 
* Normalize grad students' mental health concerns ("depressed? join the club... you're not alone")
* Present statistics on depression, etc. (1 in 10 grad students will experience major depression)
* Disseminate healthy habits (socialize on weekends, even if your professor doesn't)
* Particularly reach out to male grad students (real men, real depression?)
 
Possible media for the above messages:
 
* Nalgene bottles with catchy stickers (and maybe a flyer tucked inside)
* T-shirts printed with statistics/slogans
* Posters
* Post-its or sticky-tabs
* Key chains, bottle openers
* Highlighters, computer paraphernalia
 
Anecdotes
 
We skimmed the stories submitted by grad students and selected a number of main points/messages to forward to top administrators (e.g. Dean Mary Ann Mason, Chancellor Berdahl, EVCP Paul Gray, Steve Lustig, Academic Senate Committee Chairs). Nicole will pull quotes from the anecdotes to support each of these points, and we'll review her collection at the next meeting.
 
Main points to be addressed: the particular challenges faced by grad students (families, social isolation, competitiveness, transition), financial difficulties with unmanageable health care expenses, inadequate access to existing mental health services, need for faculty to improve advisor-grad student relationships.
 
Budget
 
We reviewed Steve Lustig's discussion of the UHS budget. Temina will draft a cover letter based on Melissa's faculty resolution, outlining 1) the need for better/more services on campus [because of depression on college campuses & Berkeley's enrollment growth]; 2) the inadequate allocation of resources to UHS; and 3) some possible solutions to the budget problem [roll back last year's 20% cut, direct academic programs funds to UHS health promotion]. We'll review this at the next meeting.
 
Temina will also ask Steve Lustig if a modest increase in the UHS budget could result in a significant increase in quality/access to services (e.g. how expensive is it to reduce appointment waiting time and re-instate emergency & drop-in services?)
 
Updates
 
The grad mental health survey is completely finished-- we're just waiting on the Committee for Protection of Human Subjects to approve our protocol.
 
The Academic Senate appears ready to do something about mental health at UC Berkeley (eg. educating faculty, reviewing data on student needs, updating academic policy, etc). We're still waiting to hear how they'll organize their efforts (an Academic Senate committee? a joint faculty-administration task force?)
 
We might recommend that the Administration convene campus wide "fora" or "town hall" meetings-- for faculty, graduate students, undergrads, and staff-- on the topic of mental health (something akin to the recent diversity project on campus).
 

 
February 17 2004
Meeting Agenda
 
In attendance: TBA
 

 
February 2 2004
Meeting Agenda
 
In attendance: Brian, Jenny, Daniel, Karen, Nicole, Temina
 
Academic Senate Committee: Dan presented an excellent draft letter asking graduate students for personal anecdotes related to mental health concerns and UHS services/resources. The letter will be posted on a website, along with an anonymous email-based form for collecting responses. Temina will look into web options
 
UCB Budget Allocations: Melissa drafted a resolution to the Academic Senate and sent it out by email, though she could not attend the meeting. We will discuss this at the next meeting
 
Grad Student Survey: Jenny layed out her plan for pre-testing the final draft of the survey. She will complete the pre-testing by the end of next week. Temina reported that the CPHS protocol has been submitted for committee review. We expect a reply in 3-4 weeks. After that, we can move forward with the survey.
 
UHS Advisory Committee: We briefly discussed comments to deliver to the UHS grad mental health advisory committee (chaired by Sue Bell). Concerns included ability of CPS to adequately deal with acute [medical] care, conflict of "privacy vs. access", possibility that CPS could better define its niche within UHS (mostly short term care?), how to deal with people who need single doses of medication immediately, how to advertise medical health care as an option for those concerned about mental disorder but not interested in counseling/therapy. Concensus was that some comments might be better delivered to Steve Lustig (a more centralized part of UHS, as opposed to CPS)
 
Chancellor Search: Dan recommends that the GA President ask all Chancellor candidates at least one question about depression and mental health on college campuses, just to see if this major issue is on their radar. If they're totally unaware that mental health is a major academic concern, they may not be the best candidate!
 
Outreach: Dan shared some concerns with UHS depression campaign outreach materials; do we want to target outreach materials more specifically to grads? Design our own supplementary outreach materials? Reprint UHS "Look for the Signs" bookmarks for all grad students? We'll revisit this issue at a future meeting.
 
Future of the MHTF: Possible tasks for next year's task force would probably need to be more limited in scope than this year, because we may not have such an active group. One idea is a "5k Run for Mental Health". Other ideas include follow up on this semester's survey; follow up with the Academic Senate committee and the UHS graduate mental health advisory committee; continuation of outreach to grad students.
 
December 11 2003
Meeting Agenda
 
In attendance: Brian, Jenny, Daniel, Melissa, Temina
 
At this meeting, we created a number of new assignments:
 
Academic Senate Committee: Dan was to draft a letter asking graduate students for personal anecdotes, for use a letter-writing campaign illustrating grad student support for a faculty Senate committee on student mental health.
 
UCB Budget Allocations: Melissa was to draft a resolution to the Academic Senate, directing that UHS/CPS allocations should be protected in the face of impending budget cuts. One central arguement is that students cannot take advantage of academic resources without adequate personal/emotional support and health care resources.
 
House Legislation: Temina was to draft a letter writing campaign alert in support of HR 3593, the Campus Care and Counseling Act.
 
In addition, we came up with some recommendations:
 
Grad Student Survey: Jenny, Brian, and Temina gave an update on the survey; Temina should work on the CPHS protocol and raffle funding restrictions.
 
Future of the MHTF: All members of the task force agreed that we need to start casting a wide net for membership... next year, we would like the task force to continue its work. So we need to start recruiting soon for new members.
 
November 18 2003
Meeting Agenda
 
In attendance: Brian, Jenny, Daniel, Temina
 
Essentially, we combed through the grad student survey one last time. Jenny and Brian have done an amazing job with the survey questions.
 
We deferred discussion of the speaker series and outreach efforts to a later meeting (when more people are present).
 
Jenny commented that we need to assemble the entire group to make decisions regarding future aims/directions for the Mental Health Task Force.
 
November 04 2003
Meeting Agenda
 
In attendance: Brian, Jenny, Karen, Temina
 
Announcements
 
Check out the Tang Center's Depression Screening Day on November 18th
 
The Office of Academic Affairs has $1000 for travel to a conference— this funding can be used to take interested MHTF members to the U Michigan Depression on College Campuses conference held in March 2004. If you're interested in participating, send an email to academics@ga.berkeley.edu.
 
Graduate Mental Health Survey
 
We completed review of the first draft of the survey. Jenny and Brian will incorporate comments and revisions for our next meeting (Nov 18). Jenny, Brian, and Temina will meet later this week with Judi Sui (Graduate Division) about possible faculty sponsorship of the survey for human subjects protocol approval.
 
October 21 2003
Meeting Agenda
 
In attendance: Brian, Daniel, Jenny, Karen, Melissa, Nicole, Telford, Temina
 
New Business
 
There were a number of announcements we didn't cover during our meeting— please read through & comment (if desired) on the following informational items:
 
OUTREACH
 
Daniel, Nicole, Telford, and Temina attended the UHS/CPS Advisory Committee on Graduate Mental Health. This group will focus on ensuring that Tang Center Mental Health services are accessible, high quality, adequately publicized, and appropriate for the needs of graduate students.
 
Other issues this committee will address: special needs of international students; faculty education (e.g. mental health materials in the faculty handbook); advising/learning environments that can minimize the progression or severity of mental health problems.
 
SPEAKER SERIES
 
Temina spoke with Prof. Sam Barondes (UCSF). He is eager to speak at Berkeley next January or February, provided that we can guarantee a significant audience. He recommended requesting "sponsorship" of a major department or academic unit on campus. Temina will contact Dean Mason (Graduate Division), R. Gronsky (Academic Senate Chair), B. Knight (Neuroscience Dept. Chair), or other possible sponsors.
 
CONFERENCE
 
March 2004 Conference -- Depression on College Campuses
Do MHTF members want to participate? The GA can subsidize travel for a Berkeley delegation to attend the conference. More details at next meeting.
 
Graduate Mental Health Survey
 
Jenny and Brian drafted a really excellent set of survey questions! The formal survey will be a random sample of 2000 graduate students, with oversampling of international students. We also discussed the possibility of distributing a less formal but more descriptive survey of all graduate students, including collection of anecdotal information from students in targeted departments.
 
We undertook a first phase of survey question revisions, and we'll continue this at our next meeting. Email taskforce@uclink to offer your input on the draft survey.
 
October 7 2003
Meeting Agenda
 
Proposed Task Force Budget
 
Web-based survey
Administered through Office of Student Research		1500-2000
Survey Support
Publicity for survey (posters)
Raffle Prizes (?)		1000
Outreach Materials
Posters
Educational Materials
Teaching Tools (for GSIs and Faculty)		3500

 
Proposal for Committee on Student Mental Health
 
Revisions were submitted both via email and during this meeting of the task force. A final version of the proposal will be placed online soon. After the final version of the proposal has been reviewed by members of the task force, we'll forward this document to the Academic Senate (ideally by the end of October)
 
UHS Advisory Committee on Grad Mental Health
 
First Committee Meeting:
Tuesday, October 21st
8:00-9:30 AM
Third Floor, Tang Center
 
Telford, Melissa, Dan, Nicole, and Temina have expressed interested in attending this meeting. Please email academics@ga.berkeley.edu ASAP if you are able to attend.
 
Mental Health Survey
 
Jenny Hyun and Brian Quinn are heading up this effort.
 
They have contacted individuals at MIT and UCSD for details of earlier studies of depression & suicide in college populations. In addition, they will be meeting with people at UC Berkeley's Counseling & Psychological Services, Office of Student Research, and Graduate Division to iron out details. Here is a tentative timeline for the survey:
 
October Jenny and Brian draft survey questions
Apply for Human Subjects Protocol Approval
November Plan for Pre-Testing of Survey
Plan Data Analysis
Get Feedback on Survey Questions from Task Force
Lay Out web-based survey (html)
December Pre-testing & Feedback
JanuarySurvey Revision
Begin Publicity for Survey
Collect prizes (from donors/sponsors?)

 
Lecture Series
 
Fall 2003: Possible Speakers
Robert Sapolsky, Stanford University
Samuel Barondes, UCSF
 
Telford and Temina will work on contacting these individuals
 
Spring 2004: Possible Speakers
Andrew Solomon
Meri Nana-Ama Danqua
 
September 23 2003
Meeting Agenda
 
About nine of us met to set an agenda for the semester, refine the goals of our task force, and get started with our work to improve mental health outcomes on the Berkeley campus. Please read below for an outline of what we discussed:
 
Setting Priorities of the Task Force: Determined by consensus
 
Building Momentum
Get other on-campus entities to recognize our task force, and build awareness for the work we’ll be doing. Also advocate the formation of (or participate in) parallel committees within the Academic Senate and University Health Services.
 
Mental Health Survey
Undertake a graduate student survey/needs assessment addressing grad student awareness of mental health services, satisfaction with mental health services, and (if possible) correlation between academic performance and level of social support on campus. Include in the survey a review of departmental climates (for example, which departments provide adequate social support to graduate students).
 
Outreach
Work with the Tang Center / Counseling & Psychological Services (CPS) to build awareness of depression/suicide and mental health resources on campus.
 
Less important priorities: Lecture series on mental health issues as they relate to grad students & the academic community
 
Calendar of Upcoming Deadlines
 
October 2: Presentation of resolution to the graduate student govt, requesting official support of the GA Mental Health Task Force. This is essentially an opportunity to get other graduate students to “buy in” to the work we’re doing on campus. The resolution will also ask that the Graduate Assembly support formation of an Academic Senate committee addressing student mental health.
 
October 7: Planned date for the second meeting of the Mental Health Task Force.
 
Agenda for October 7 Meeting:
  1. Review and revise the proposal for the Academic Senate Committee on Student Mental Health (please read it online).
  2. Literature review of graduate student mental health (e.g. review of surveys done on other university campuses).
  3. Discuss plan/process for the design and distribution of the grad student survey.
*October 21: First meeting of the UHS Advisory Committee on Grad Student Mental Health, convened by CPS. Folks from the Mental Health Task Force will attend this meeting and find out how the task force can partner with CPS on doing outreach. *Actual committee meeting date has not been set yet. I’ll email as soon as I hear…
 
October 30: The proposal for the Committee on Student Mental Health will be reviewed by the Academic Senate’s Committee on Student Affairs on this date. Ideally, they’ll decide to adopt the committee proposal, and then forward it to the rest of the Academic Senate. Just a date to keep in mind…
 
Working in Groups
 
We assigned some of the most time-sensitive tasks to smaller groups of grad students on the task force. If you’re interested in contributing to these smaller projects, please directly contact the appropriate person:
 
Writing the GA Resolution Supporting the Graduate Mental Health Task Force
Marc Ettlinger & Temina Madon
 
Planning the Survey of Grad Student Mental Health
Brian Quinn & Jenny Hyun
 
Liaising with Counseling & Psychological Services
Dan Handwerker, Melissa Adams, Teldford Moore, Temina Madon