College Mental Health: Challenges & Opportunities

Khadijah Booth Watkins, MD, MPH, DFAACAP, is the Associate Director of the Child and Adolescent Psychiatry Residency Training Program of Massachusetts General Hospital and McLean Hospital and Associate Director of the Clay Center for Young Healthy Minds at Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH). In addition, she provides clinical care to children, adolescents, and families in the Child Outpatient Clinic and continues to teach and supervise fellows, residents, and medical students.

Dr. Booth Watkins specializes in the evaluation, diagnosis, and treatment of psychiatric disorders in children, adolescents, and adults. Areas of particular interest and expertise are Anxiety Disorders, Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder, student and college mental health, mental health within schools, diversity, inclusion, and suicide prevention.

Dr. Booth Watkins received her Bachelor of Science degree from Xavier University of Louisiana, her Medical Degree from The University of Tennessee Health Science Center, College of Medicine, and her Master of Public Health from Columbia University Mailman School of Public Health with an emphasis on healthcare and hospital policy and management. She completed her internship in Internal Medicine and residency in General Psychiatry at the University of Medicine and Dentistry-New Jersey Medical School prior to fellowship in Child and Adolescent Psychiatry at the New York-Presbyterian Hospital combined program of Columbia University College of Physicians and Surgeons and Weill Cornell Medical College. Subsequent to her Child and Adolescent Psychiatry training, she completed a two-year Public Psychiatry Fellowship at Columbia University/New York State Psychiatric Institute.

Following post-graduate training, Dr. Booth Watkinsjoined the faculty of New York-Presbyterian/Columbia University Medical Center as an Assistant Clinical Professor of Psychiatry, Columbia University College of Physicians and Surgeons, working in the School-Based Mental Health Program and serving as the Interim Assistant Director of Training for the New York-Presbyterian Hospital Child & Adolescent Psychiatry Residency Training Program. Over the course of time at Cornell, she served as the Director of the Adolescent Partial Hospitalization Program, Assistant Training Director in the Westchester Division, the Youth Anxiety Center Psychiatrist targeting transitional age youth at high risk of failing to shift into independent adulthood due to untreated anxiety, supervisor to medical students, general psychiatry residents and fellows, and was involved in the design and administration of didactic curricula and clinical rotations.

Dr. Booth Watkins joined the faculty at Weill Cornell Medical College as an Assistant Professor of Psychiatry until June 2019, at which point she joined the faculty at MGH. She has presented locally and nationally on topics related to anxiety, school refusal, parenting, diversity, inclusions, and physician wellness. Additionally, she has consulted to several mental health organizations and television shows.

Dr. Jason Campbell-Foster is the Dean of Students. Jason has served as the Senior Associate Dean of Students since 2019. Prior to working at Boston University, Dean Campbell-Foster held a variety of leadership roles at Northeastern University. As the deputy to the Associate Provost and Dean of Students, Dean Campbell-Foster works closely with the leadership in the division to deliver a world-class experience for students where they are able to thrive and reach their full potential. A native of Buffalo, New York, Dean Campbell-Foster earned his BA in English from SUNY Fredonia, a Masters in College Student Personnel Administration from Canisius College, and his Doctor of Education from Northeastern University. As a doctoral student, Dean Campbell-Foster focused his dissertation research on LGBT student participation in digital collective action communities.

Dr. Brett E. Scofield currently serves as the Associate Director of Penn State Center for Counseling and Psychological Services (CAPS) as well as the Executive Director of the Center for Collegiate Mental Health (CCMH), a national practice-based research network of over 775 college counseling centers.  Dr. Scofield has played a significant role within CCMH for the past 9 years, contributing to several publications on the topic of college student mental health and helping the Center develop numerous tools that are widely used by college counseling centers nationally to advocate for services.

Dr. Zhou is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Public Health at Wayne State’s CLAS. Her research uses mixed methods to understand and address the mental health needs of emerging adults and college student populations with particular focus on underserved populations, including students of color, international students, and sexual and gender minorities. Dr. Zhou’s broader research portfolio combines varied methodological approaches to identify the mechanisms that perpetuate mental health disparities, including in-depth qualitative work and large-scale epidemiological surveys.

Dr. Zhou is also a co-investigator of the Healthy Minds Network, a research-to-practice network dedicated to improving the mental and emotional wellbeing of young people through innovative, multidisciplinary scholarship. She received her Ph.D. in Health Services Organization and Policy at the University of Michigan School of Public Health, where she was a Center for Research on Ethnicity, Culture, and Health (CRECH) Scholar.

Kate Hidalgo Bellows is a staff reporter at The Chronicle, covering health and safety on campus.

Since starting at The Chronicle as a fellow in 2021, Bellows has reported on student protests against sexual assault, campus suicide clusters, the growth of teletherapy on campus, and parents-groups’ attempts to get institutions to increase their security measures. She lead The Chronicle’s Daily Briefing newsletter from 2022 to 2023.

Bellows came to The Chronicle from The Island Packet in Hilton Head Island, S.C. There, she wrote about labor, housing, and the local Latino community. Her investigation of living conditions at Hilton Head Island’s only public-housing complex won a first-place award from South Carolina Press Association in the enterprise-reporting category.

Bellows is a 2020 graduate of the University of Virginia. She is a member of the National Association of Hispanic Journalists.