Soul Glow: An Application for Helping to Understand and Improve Mental Health Care of HBCU Students

Mental healthcare within African American communities is often misunderstood due to lack of awareness and stigmas surrounding needing counseling services. In communities of color, barriers often exist to seek aid for mental health services due to scarce resources of trained professionals and high health care costs. Young people that matriculate into college from these communities may experience increased anxiety and depression when faced with the pressures of higher education. This research studied 92 students from historically black colleges and universities (HBCUs) to determine the difficulties they encounter with obtaining preventative mental health services at their institutions. Feedback from participants was used to create a community environment for HBCU students wishing to maintain their mental health and help others around them endure the unique pressures of higher education at minority-serving institutions. This application, called Soul Glow, will be used in a future study to determine its effects of lessening the pressures on already overburdened counseling services at HBCUs.