Mental Health Support Outside Campus Hours

For students balancing school with work, family responsibilities and other demands, mental health support, typically offered during traditional campus hours, may not always be available when they need it. The Technical College System of Georgia is looking to close that gap.

Last week the system announced a new statewide initiative to expand mental health support across 16 of its 22 campuses. Through a partnership with Uwill, a digital mental health and wellness platform designed for higher education, students will have access to counseling and crisis support 24-7.

Kim Ellis, coordinator of special populations and career services at the college system, said the expansion is designed to remove some of the barriers that can prevent students from seeking support when they need it.

“We were noticing that students would struggle with things like stress, anxiety or not having any way [to] receive counseling services,” Ellis said. “Some of our colleges do have counselors, but not many of them. So we wanted to really look at the student as a whole and see how we could help them not only in the classroom but with things outside of the classroom that may interfere with them coming onto campus.”

The expansion comes as students nationally continue to express demand for greater mental health support. In Inside Higher Ed’s most recent Student Voice survey of 1,038 two- and four-year students from 203 institutions, roughly one in five write-in responses called for more mental health counseling—the most common theme cited in the comments. Students also frequently called for greater awareness of existing resources and more opportunities to build community and social connections.

Access to care can be particularly challenging in Georgia; nearly 1.4 million adults in the state need mental health support each year, while 76 percent of its counties are designated as mental health professional shortage areas.

“We have students from all walks of life that come to us because they want to attend classes so they can have a better career or step directly into the workforce,” Ellis said. “We want to be able to provide any kind of support, especially as it relates to their mental health, that enables them to be successful in the classroom and obtain those goals that we all want them to achieve.”

Beyond traditional hours: The partnership with Uwill provides students free access to teletherapy, crisis support and wellness programming. Students can schedule same-day counseling appointments during the day or at night, including during school breaks.

The platform also allows students to select counselors based on preferences including language, ethnicity and area of need. Students experiencing a mental health crisis can be connected directly with a licensed therapist in less than 20 seconds, according to Uwill.

“We believe that immediacy is essential to what we’re trying to accomplish,” said Adam Ring, co-founder of Uwill. “It can often prevent a small problem from becoming a bigger problem, and really, it helps fill the gap.”

He added that students balancing work, parenting and other responsibilities outside the classroom can also face financial, workplace and family pressures that affect their mental health.

“We tend to see students who are experiencing economic challenges or stress at work or at home also having mental health challenges,” Ring said. “So if we can help address that piece effectively by offering immediate care, we could really help the student holistically.”

Ring said providing care when students decide to seek it is key to the program’s success. 

“There are many wonderful counselors at the [college system], and they are doing excellent work, but we know that mental health issues persist on the weekends, in the summers, after hours,” he added. “For that student who really is at the point where they want to reach out, they’re raising their hand and saying, ‘I need help,’ is there a licensed provider that they can meet with on that day to address any issue, big or small? And that’s really where we can be very helpful.”

Ellis said providing around-the-clock access is part of ensuring students can get that support when they need it, rather than only when traditional services are available.

“The 24-7 access is super important to us because you can’t time an emergency,” Ellis said. “You never know when it’s going to happen, and we want to make sure our students know that there’s someone available to help them at any time that they may need it.”

A flexible approach: Ellis said that flexibility is particularly important given the wide range of students the college system serves. The system enrolls high school students through dual enrollment as well as first-time college students, working adults, career changers and student parents, among other populations.

She also pointed to Gwinnett Technical College, which began using Uwill in 2024, as an early test of the model within the system. Ellis said the experience demonstrated that students would use counseling services when they could access them virtually and on their own schedules.

“We learned that students will access the services if you have them,” Ellis said. “They really saw the benefit of how students utilize services virtually, and so that was really a driver for us.”

At Gwinnett, about 35 percent of Uwill counseling sessions occurred outside traditional campus counseling hours, according to Ring.

“They may not be on a physical campus like other students, perhaps, and so they need that flexibility, whether it be geography, which we’re essentially eliminating, and then time of day as well as the weekend,” Ring said.

He noted that colleges are increasingly viewing access to mental health care as interconnected with broader student success.

“Really since COVID, colleges and universities are looking at this much more holistically than they have before,” Ring said. “What’s evolved is the interconnected piece there. Making sure students are getting immediate access to mental health care means it’s more likely that they’re going to stay in school, that they’re going to thrive and that they’re going to achieve their potential.”

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