Rackham Committee on Graduate Student Mental Health and Well-Being

Rackham’s Mental Health and Well-Being (MHW) Committee is focused on advocating for the mental health and well-being of graduate students, including ensuring that graduate student mental health and well-being are prioritized by Rackham and individual graduate programs. The MHW Committee is working to implement the recommendations of the Rackham Graduate School’s Task Force on Graduate Student Mental Health (which ran from 2019-2021) and is also developing resources that departments and graduate programs can use to promote graduate student mental health and well-being. The MHW Committee, and its associated Advisory Group, will also work to identify emerging issues, to evaluate potential resources and changes, and to ensure that efforts within Rackham are well-integrated with those elsewhere at the university.

This work is urgently needed to better support the health and well-being of our students. Many graduate students face mental health challenges such as major depression, severe anxiety, disordered eating, and/or suicidal thoughts. A recent meta-analysis found that 24 percent of Ph.D. students showed clinically significant symptoms of depression, and 17 percent showed clinically significant symptoms of anxiety (Satinsky et al. 2021 Scientific Reports). This situation requires us to critically examine structures that can be changed to better support graduate student mental health and well-being.

Supporting graduate student mental health and well-being is not only the right thing to do, but also will promote academic success and long-term health of students. Well-being and academic performance are interdependent and dynamic: four in ten graduate students reported that mental or emotional health affected their academic performance in the previous four weeks (Eisenberg et al. 2007 Am. J. Orthopsychiatry).

Overall, supporting graduate student mental health and wellness is an essential component of Rackham’s mission to advance excellence in graduate education, to cultivate a vibrant and diverse student community, and to impact the public good through scholarship. The MHW Committee and MHW Committee Advisory Group are eager to take on this work.

Committee Members

We have assembled a diverse, multidisciplinary committee made up of faculty, staff, mental health professionals, and graduate students.

Meghan Duffy

Professor, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Co-chair, Rackham Committee on Graduate Student Mental Health and Well-Being

Kim Elliott

Office of Academic Programs/Chief Enrollment Management, School for Environment and Sustainability

Amy Fredell

Rackham Graduate School, Academic Program Specialist for Doctoral Internship Program and Postdoctoral Programs

Ashley Jacob

Counseling and Psychological Services (CAPS), Counseling Psychologist

Ann Jeffers

Associate Professor of Civil and Environmental Engineering, Co-chair, Rackham Committee on Graduate Student Mental Health and Well-Being

Kristen Jensen

Manager, Associate Deans’ Initiatives, Rackham Graduate School

Ram Mahalingam

Department of Psychology and Barger Leadership Institute, Professor and Director, Barger Leadership Institute

Mallory Martin-Ferguson

Interim Director, Graduate Student and Program Consultation Services, Rackham Graduate School

LaNeisha Murphy

Office of Graduate & Postdoctoral Studies (OGPS), University of Michigan School of Medicine, Mental Health & Wellness Counselor

Akilah Patterson

School of Public Health, Graduate Student

Joy Pehlke

Health Educator and Lead for Student Engagement and Academic Partnerships, Wolverine Wellness

Rosemary Perez

Associate Professor of Education, School of Education

Peter Railton

LSA Philosophy, Arthur F Thurnau Professor, Gregory S Kavka Distinguished University Professor of Philosophy, John Stephenson Perrin Professor and Professor of Philosophy, College of Literature, Science, and the Arts

Elizabeth Rohr

Rackham Graduate School, Wellbeing Advocate, Academic Program Manager

Harini Suri

Psychology, Graduate student

Megan Tompkins-Stange

Ford School of Public Policy, Assistant Professor of Public Policy, Gerald R Ford School of Public Policy

Andrea Valenzuela

Graduate student, Chemical Biology

Arthur Verhoogt (ex officio)

Rachelle Wilcox

Physician, University Health Service

Advisory Group

Ethriam Brammer

Assistant Dean, DEI Implementation Lead, Rackham Graduate School

Mary Jo Desprez

Director, Wolverine Wellness

Meghan Duffy

Professor, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Chair, Rackham Committee on Graduate Student Mental Health and Well-Being

Angie Farrehi

Director of CARE Center, College of Engineering

Patty Griffin

Director, Housing Student Conduct and Conflict Resolution and COVID Response, University Housing

Kate Hagadone

Mental Health and Wellness Counselor, Medical School

Paula Hathaway

Manager of Graduate Education, College of Literature, Science, and the Arts

Andrea Hill

Wellness and Inclusion Advocate, Biostatistics

Matt Irelan

Graduate Program Coordinator, Industrial Operation Engineering

Kristen Jensen

Manager, Associate Deans’ Initiatives (Interim), Rackham Graduate School

Jennifer Nguyen

Student Services Supervisor, Linguistics

Jessica Randolph

Director, Student Services, Mathematics

Ida Faye Webster

Director, Rackham Program Review