Pitt-Greensburg reading initiative to focus on mental health as anxiety, loneliness remain high

It’s not uncommon for Sheila Confer to hear that her students at University of Pittsburgh at Greensburg are struggling with their mental health.

An assistant professor of interdisciplinary studies and Academic Village director, Confer has noticed an uptick in mental health conversations with her students. It’s particularly the case during her “Wellness and Resilience for College and Beyond” course, developed to teach students about preventative mental health care.

“I will say that since covid, I have definitely witnessed more anxiety and depression — and this is students coming right out and telling me what their diagnoses are,” she said.

Continued conversations around mental health inspired Confer and a group of her colleagues to select “The Anxious Generation: How the Great Rewiring of Childhood Is Causing an Epidemic of Mental Illness” for the college’s fourth annual community reading initiative.

The 2024 book by Jonathan Haidt, a New York University professor and social psychologist, is a critically acclaimed national bestseller.

Dubbed Westmoreland Reads, the initiative invites university faculty and community members across the county to read a book alongside the university’s first-year students. It culminates in a community discussion event in the fall.

As part of Westmoreland Reads last year, about 100 community members and 300 students and faculty read “What the Eyes Don’t See,” a 2018 book about the Flint, Mich., health crisis over lead in tap water. More than 100 people attended a campus event to meet the author, Dr. Mona Hanna-Attisha.

Students report mental health concerns

Confer is not the only one noticing the continued prevalence of mental health concerns among college students.

Gayle Pamerleau has worked at Pitt-Greensburg’s counseling center for 23 years. The number of students seeking services at the center has more than doubled from 2009 to 2023, Pamerleau said.

Now the director of counseling, Pamerleau was the only counselor at the university in the early 2000s — a time when she saw about 50 students per year.

The center’s two full-time counselors and one graduate assistant provided more than 1,200 hours of service to nearly 150 students in the 2023-2024 academic year. That accounted for more than 11% of the university’s 1,325-student population that year.

It is difficult to speculate whether the increase comes from a rise in mental health concerns or a decline in the stigma around counseling services, she said.

“Anxiety has been the most common presenting concern for several years,” Pamerleau said, “and that’s not just us — that’s nationally as well.”

About 64% of college students across the country assessed in a 2024 report by Penn State’s Center for Collegiate Mental Health had received an anxiety diagnosis.

The report surveyed more than 173,000 students receiving counseling services at more than 210 colleges and universities from July 2023 to last June.

And in the National College Health Assessment III — which surveyed nearly 80,000 college students from 2019 to 2024 — nearly 50% of responders reported feeling lonely.

More than 20% reported serious psychological distress, and nearly 33% said anxiety impeded their academic performance.

Though mental health concerns originate from a variety of places, Pamerleau said the digital age plays a role.

“I think there’s a connection between cellphones — texting, social media, everything — and loneliness, isolation, everything that seems to be a problem these days,” Pamerleau said.

Mental health in the digital age

After seeing that all 138 audiobook copies of Haidt’s book each had nine holds placed on them in a local library system, “The Anxious Generation” became the clear choice for this year’s reading initiative, Confer said.

“We wondered if (students) might feel like they were being sort of analyzed,” she said, “or even talked down to, or sort of told ‘This is how you are.’

“We determined that it has enough research in it and enough thematic things that are really applicable to not just our students, but their parents, teachers, really everyone in the community, that we figured it would be a really good book to just have everybody engage with.”

The book is also gaining traction among local K-12 schools.

Some staff from Greensburg Salem have read the book, according to Superintendent Ken Bissell. The Valley School of Ligonier, a private K-8 school, recently made the book their all-staff read, Confer said.

Confer isn’t sure what Pitt-Greensburg students will think of the book, given that she has received mixed reactions after showing her students “The Social Dilemma,” a 2020 documentary that highlights the manipulative design of social media platforms.

“They were kind of blasé about it,” she said. “They’re just like, ‘I think it’s fine’ or ‘I’m good, I’m not addicted to this.’

“My hope is that by engaging in a book that has a lot of research behind it and is broken down into easily digestible sections, we’ll be able to get everyone thinking about it.”

But Confer suspects students will still take something away from the book, even if they disagree with it.

“When you go out into the real world and into the workforce — particularly into our political system — to try to accomplish anything, you just need to be able to have conversations with people who you don’t agree with,” she said.

“And I think that kind of skill building is really necessary.”

Students will read “The Anxious Generation” in August, at the start of next semester. Print and audiobook copies of the book could be available for community members to request on the Westmoreland Reads website by mid-April.

Confer plans to hold a public event in the fall with speakers addressing topics raised by the book.

For more information, visit greensburg.pitt.edu.