What Should I Do?
A Four-Step Process for Supporting Students Experiencing Distress
Many students will experience challenges to their well-being during their time at university. Given their close working relationships with students, instructors can play a crucial role in supporting students and connecting them to campus resources if and when they experience distress.
In this session, participants consider the complex and often uncomfortable interpersonal dynamics that can emerge when sharing or discussing concerns about a student’s well-being. They also learn a four-step process they can use to productively navigate challenging conversations that address mental health with their students. Volunteers are then given an opportunity to practice these skills in a lower-stakes setting via role plays with performers who are prepared to demonstrate a range of responses and resistances to conversations of this kind.
This session is appropriate for members of the higher educational community who hold instructional roles. This session is only offered in a fully in-person synchronous format (120 minutes). It will be available across the 2026-27 academic year, beginning in October.
**This session depicts student characters with varying degrees and manifestations of distress. Please reach out to a CRLT Players staff member for a fuller description of the content of this session.
In this session, participants will:
- Consider how mild or moderate distress might manifest in student behavior.
- Familiarize themselves with a research-based process for supporting students experiencing distress in role-appropriate ways.
- Reflect on how they might personally most effectively move through this process.
- Practice applying skills introduced in the session within an authentic scenario (if one volunteers to do so).
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