UNLV is checking in on students’ mental health with proactive texting service

LAS VEGAS (KLAS) — College can be very stressful from tuition costs, to studies, to everything in between. That is why UNLV is taking a proactive approach to students’ well-being by using a system designed to spot issues before they become bigger problems.

“I want our students to constantly be checking in with how they are doing emotionally, physically, mentally, spiritually and in their interpersonal relationships and then have tools to help themselves when things might need a little bit of help,” Dr. Anne Weisman, Director of Well-being at the Kirk Kerkorian School of Medicine explained. “What I thought for wellbeing for our medical school at that time is we had mediation sessions and yoga classes…but there wasn’t anything that was this preventive.”

The tool they have implemented for a more preventive approach is Early Alert, a text-based service that checks in with students periodically on different aspects of their wellness.

The service will randomly text students and ask them to rate an aspect of their wellness from one to 10 and depending upon their answer, it will send resources or connect them with crisis counselors right away who are on standby 24/7.

“A lot of times when I see students and they receive the text messages they’ll tell me ‘oh it made me stop and think how I am doing right now,'” Dr. Weisman explained.

That’s exactly what they hope Early Alert will do by getting students to check in with themselves and maybe even with each other.

The check-ins will see how students are doing in different wellness categories including emotional, physical, spiritual, sexual, financial, academic, and interpersonal relationships. Overall students are doing quite well with an average wellness score of 7.15 out of 10.

But Dr. Weisman wants to cover more than just students with tools like this.

“I want all of this well-being work that we do at the school to also be work that we’re doing in the community. I really do think we can change the health of Nevadans in less than a generation,” Dr. Weisman said.

Right now, the service is free to all graduate students at UNLV.

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