In the transition period between the recent presidential election and upcoming inauguration, many Americans have cited the nation’s uncertain future as a significant source of stress. Feelings of depression, anxiety, anger and helplessness frequently arise in response to sociopolitical pressures and warrant being addressed with equal legitimacy and care.
The impact on mental health has been especially pertinent on college campuses across the country. Elevated sociopolitical stress is correlated to poor emotional well-being on college campuses, where 60% of college students already meet the criteria for at least one mental health challenge and are particularly susceptible to political anxiety. Despite UC Santa Barbara’s intensive emphasis on supporting student wellness amidst political developments, a paradox arises in our institution of higher education: Those who are more informed and critical of systemic societal issues often feel a greater burden psychologically.
For professor Erin Khuê Ninh, this collective emotional response to political inequities was heightened by the recent election and became the decisive catalyst for launching This May Help. This on-campus study, a project funded by the Pahl Center out of the Division of Social Sciences, will begin this week and continue through winter quarter to address political depression and equip students with strategies to combat it.
“This project was conceived over a year ago,” Ninh said. “I already felt like students were struggling under the weight of accumulated history of environmental degradation, and then a sense of political hopelessness.”
As a professor in the Department of Asian American Studies, Ninh is familiar with UCSB’s network of mental health resources, ranging from counseling services to peer support programs, and observed a collective “sensation of grief in response to an understanding” of the potential consequences an upcoming policy shift could have for American citizens.
This May Help emerged from the idea “that these feelings are not invalid.” Ninh and her research team will explore “how we can both acknowledge these feelings as meaningful in context and yet still help ourselves on an everyday basis, activating a sense of agency and possibility.”
Ninh’s focus on fostering resilience amidst overwhelming institutional challenges will guide this project’s programming. This May Help will begin with a straightforward online survey to measure mental health across UCSB’s student body. Broad participation at this first stage will be critical to maximize the study’s impact.
Led by Ninh and two former students, the research team will then proceed to host pilot events, inviting survey respondents and students to participate in focus groups and interviews. These sessions will allow the team to gather feedback in the “immediate aftermath of the pilot intervention” while offering participants strategies to “preserve their sense of agency and possibility.”
One pilot project will be led by contemporary dancers, addressing how depression and anxiety can be carried in the body and cause affected individuals to feel as though they “physically cannot move.” By introducing movement practices, Ninh’s team hopes to help students “break through their emotion into possibility and agency on an everyday level.” Another pilot project will focus on music therapy, approaching music as an “accessible, communal and noncompetitive” tool to “enjoy easily with people around you.”
Additionally, journaling will be used as a data collection method, encouraging students to reflect on their emotional well-being. Participants will document how they have incorporated tools from the pilot workshops into their lives and whether these tools have helped alleviate feelings of political distress.
This spring, Ninh’s research team will transition from focus group workshops to interviews with students and faculty on their experiences with mental health resources at UCSB. This secondary stage of the project will compile student perspectives and research to support strengthened mental health best-practice policies.
Throughout her career, Ninh has explored the relationship between oppressive systems of power and feelings of “structural helplessness as a condition of one’s life.” Her previous research on Asian American mental health, particularly within higher education, underscores a clear connection to This May Help and its focus on the “ongoing expectation of achievement even as you may feel the world is on fire.” To Ninh, addressing the intersection of mental health and social justice feels more urgent now than ever.
“When we feel depression in response to an actual understanding of a [political] situation, this is a valid assessment of the circumstance,” Ninh said. “But then what do you do? Because with that much emotion, I think it’s easy to feel powerless and to give up.”
According to Ninh, “Society may pathologize the individual for feeling this way, when the true pathology may be the way our system is broken.”
Social critique can both validate and exacerbate feelings of distress, and when one evaluates the evidence, hope can feel “irrational.” However, Ninh contends otherwise:. “Maybe there’s not much of an argument for hope, but how do we do without it?”
“The irrational is a thing that we need. Working through the irrational, whether it’s through art, the body or emotion, we can reactivate hope and a sense of agency.” Ninh remains confident that the synthesis of expression through art and movement, community work and political organizing can uplift struggling students and help address sociopolitical conflict. The tools her study will offer to the student body are most effective in conjunction with these “extremely rational, well thought and organized actions that can help to change the world.”
To support the development of strengthened undergraduate mental health resources at UCSB, interested students can access the ‘This May Help’ preliminary survey here.
A version of this article appeared on p.7 of the Jan. 16, 2025 edition of the Daily Nexus.