Beliefs, mental health, healthy lifestyle behaviors and coping strategies of college faculty and staff during the COVID-19 pandemic

Abstract

Objective: To assess faculty and staff beliefs about returning to campus as well as their mental health and healthy lifestyle behaviors. Participants: Faculty and staff at a large Mid-west public land-grant university. Methods: A survey was emailed to a random sample of faculty and staff (N = 6,000 faculty; N = 6,000 staff). Results: Response rate was 35.6% for faculty (n = 2,138) and 37.8% (n = 2,226) for staff. Participants who were working from home (>60%) had less confidence about returning to campus safely than those who had been working on campus. Eighteen to 27% of faculty and 25%–31% of staff met the cutoff for clinical anxiety and the rates of depression were 4.4%–8.3% and 9.7%–10.0% respectively. Conclusion: Institutions of higher education must build wellness cultures and accelerate access to mental health services, which should be evidence-based and include a focus on promoting and maintaining overall wellness.

Keywords:

• Community health
• health education
• mental health
• nutrition

Conflict of interest disclosure

Dr. Bernadette Melnyk is the creator of the MINDBODYSTRONG© program. The remaining authors declare no conflicts of interest. The authors confirm that the research presented in this article met the ethical guidelines, including adherence to the legal requirements, of the United States of America and received approval from the Institutional Review Board of the Ohio State University.

Additional information

Funding

No funding was used to support this research and/or the preparation of the manuscript.