All Ears peer listeners Peyton Nguyen (Sargent’25, CAS’25) (from left), Tori Ingulli (CAS’25, COM’25), and Sohail Mohammed (CDS’25), along with Melissa Paz, Health Promotion & Prevention assistant director of mental health promotion.

Mental Health

New Free Peer Listening Program Offered at Student Health Services

All Ears hopes to help reduce the stigma around mental health and connect students with professionals if they need it

College life comes with a lot of challenges. Some students feel homesick when they first arrive, others may experience loneliness and a sense of isolation for much longer. Add to that, academic pressures, the stress of finding a job, and the balancing act of navigating relationships, and it’s a lot to keep bottled up. 

Fortunately, BU students have a new place they can go to seek help for these issues. Last semester, Student Health Services launched All Ears, a free peer listening program open to any BU student seeking a supportive, nonjudgmental space to talk with a trusted peer. All conversations are completely confidential except when a student expresses feelings of self-harm or harm to others.

“A big component of it was the recognition that often students will go to students first before connecting with a staff member or someone else at BU,” says Melissa Paz, Health Promotion & Prevention assistant director of mental health promotion. “So the idea was to have students be positioned to provide a space for a listening ear—no pun intended—and to have it be both an affirming and validating space, but also an informative space. And if necessary, students have a connective bridge to other resources or other care that might be appropriate for them.” 

These peers are students who have undergone SHS training. The first workshop for volunteers is Terriers Connect, a program for the BU community on how to support students in distress. That training provides information on how to have supportive conversations, navigate the warning signs that signify a student has a potential mental health issue, and who to consult if the peer listener is concerned about a student. 

Since these peer listeners are not professional counselors or trained therapists, All Ears is not meant to replace clinical services, Paz says. If a student’s issues warrant professional help, the peer listener will help them make an appointment with SHS immediately. 

The organizers hope All Ears can help demystify SHS Behavioral Medicine, in that the department helps “normalize help-seeking behaviors, reduce the stigma around mental health, as well as foster this culture of care among students,” Paz says.

Increasing mental health demands across the country

College students reported increasing mental health challenges before COVID-19, and those challenges were only exacerbated by the pandemic. More than 60 percent of college students met the criteria for at least one mental health problem in 2021—a nearly 50 percent increase since 2013, according to the Healthy Minds Study, an ongoing nationwide assessment of student mental health. The crisis has been made worse by a critical shortage of child and adolescent psychiatrists across the country, as reported last May by the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry. 

The idea for All Ears started about two years ago when BU Student Government’s Social Advocacy department approached SHS with a student peer support strategy proposal. They had observed other universities that had instituted similar programs, with positive results, including Boston College, Yale, Hamilton, and Middlebury, according to Navya Kotturu (CAS’24, Sargent’24), Student Government executive vice president.

Kotturu says when she and her team set out to pitch the idea of peer listening to BU, it was the peak of the pandemic, and mental health issues among students were at a breaking point. She felt that mental health resources on campus were lackluster and inaccessible. 

“I think the best people who can truly understand what you’re going through as a college student is a fellow college student,” Kotturu says. “You just need someone to empathize with what you’re struggling with, just knowing that the person you’re talking to can understand the state you are in right now as a college student. Having that foundation of understanding is super important.”

All Ears peer counselor Peyton Nguyen (Sargent’25, CAS’25) says he opens all of his sessions the same way—letting students know that everything they say that day will be kept confidential (unless it involves harm to themself or someone else) and then having them take the lead with the conversation. “We sort of figure out the underlying thing they want to talk about if they’re not sure,” Nguyen says.

While the All Ears appointments are intended to be one-off visits, students can return if they’d like, Paz says. And the feedback has been great. Students who filled out an anonymous survey after their appointment used words such as “reassured,” “hopeful,” “better,” more calm,” and “less sad.” 

“It’s really encouraging to see the power of a 30-minute singular conversation,” Paz says. “We know there is a really strong correlation between positive social support and mental health, and so students serving in this role can really serve as a bridge to care, particularly for students

from minoritized or marginalized identities and for students who feel kind of like they don’t know where to start or where to begin, since it feels less intimidating to talk to a student versus an adult.”

Students interested in becoming a peer listener for future semesters can apply through the Student Health Ambassador enrollment process. Paz says that the SHS ambassadors program generally tends to attract undergraduate students interested in health, behavioral medicine, public health, or medical fields, although that is not required. Ambassadors undergo six hours of training to start and have ongoing education throughout the semester.

Nguyen says he knows how intimidating and stressful it can feel to seek professional help in a clinical setting, where you’re unsure what to expect or what questions to ask. “So I think a program like this is super helpful because it’s more of a low-stakes, low-pressure, casual environment,” he says. “Something I’ve learned from this program is that a lot of times we just need someone to cheer us on and believe in us a little bit to help us get through whatever we’re going through.”

Interested in setting up an appointment to talk with an All Ears peer listener? Visit the program’s website to make a free half-hour appointment. You’ll be asked to complete a brief form that includes a little bit about what you would like to talk about and to select a time. Meetings are in person at the Student Health Services Health Promotion & Prevention office, 930 Commonwealth Ave., Suite 156.