Professor Launches ‘Return on Investment’ Tool for College Student Mental Health.

A team co-led by Sarah Lipson, assistant professor of health law, policy & management, has launched a brief and a new calculator showing that investing resources in college student mental health more than pays for itself.

The brief and online calculator, developed in collaboration with the American Council on Education, use empirical data from the Healthy Minds Study.

“The economic case is very strong: for every dollar spent on mental health initiatives on campus (whether that be treatment or prevention efforts), we see roughly a doubling in the return on investment in terms of tuition dollars retained because of drop outs averted,” says Lipson, who co-leads the Healthy Minds Study and is associate director of the Healthy Minds Network. “The online return-on-investment calculator allows college administrators and others to customize the calculations based on their school’s tuition rates and several other parameters.”

Lipson and her colleagues created the brief and calculator to assist campus leaders in researching and advocating for more mental health resources. It is not the case that institutions only care about the economics of investing in their students’ psychological wellbeing, she says, but showing the return-on-investment can convince administrators who are worried about limited budgets.

A student who is struggling with their mental health is twice as likely to leave an institution without graduating, regardless of prior academic record, according to the annual Healthy Minds Study, which has been fielded at over 300 colleges and universities with over 300,000 student respondents. The calculator uses parameters including population size, retention rate, and prevalence of depression, and estimates the expected return on a new investment in student mental health, such as treatment services or preventive programs, by determining the amount of tuition dollars retained as a result of averting mental health-related drop outs.

For example, a college could treat 500 students for depression for one year by investing $500,000. If that college had a $50,000 tuition and a 10-percent dropout rate, the investment would give back $1 million in additional tuition revenue by averting drop outs, the brief authors write. Those 500 students would also generate $2 million more over their lifetimes in economic productivity. “Thus, the return on the institution’s investment in mental health services—or in preventive programs with comparable effectiveness—is estimated to be $500,000 for the institution and at least $1.5 million for society at large,” the authors write.

Campuses provide an ideal setting to identify, prevent, and treat mental illness during a vulnerable and important life period, the brief’s authors write. Understanding and addressing the mental health needs of college students helps shape healthier, happier, more educated, and more productive campuses and graduates.

The brief offers several recommendations and actions colleges and universities can take to prioritize student mental health on their own campuses: surveying and listening to students and assessing their needs; improving clinical services accessibility; considering integrating mental health promotion and prevention throughout the campus system; and setting the tone regarding mental health on campus through proactive messaging, communication, and norm-setting.

Lipson is co-first author of the brief with Sara Abelson, a doctoral student at the University of Michigan. The other co-authors are Healthy Minds Study coordinators Peter Ceglarek and Megan Phillips, and Health Minds Network director Daniel Eisenberg, a professor at the University of Michigan School of Public Health.

—Michelle Samuels