OSU lab helps students get a grip on stress
Paul Granello leaned back in the comfy chair in the bright and inviting lobby of the campus laboratory he founded and explained with startling clarity why he works so hard, so tirelessly, to help college students cope with stress.
“Why is this work so important to me? Because I’m tired of people jumping off parking garages,” Granello said, referring to four such incidents on Ohio State University’s main campus in the past two years. “I want to reach you before you’re in crisis.”
Granello is an associate professor of counselor education at OSU, and two years ago he opened the SMART (Stress
Management And Resiliency Training) Lab on campus.
In that space shared with the student-wellness coaches on the fourth floor of the Physical Activity and Education Services building, students can work one-on-one with volunteers or use self-guided, web-based programs to learn about mindfulness, meditation and breathing techniques in an effort to help them relax on their own.
A small device that attaches to an earlobe tracks the heart rate as participants work through breathing exercises to offer a tangible, visible sign that what they’re doing works.
Also available are a weekly meditation group and occasional programs geared for the student-veteran population.
The idea of teaching the breathing techniques and using the biological feedback to show that they work is really fairly basic, said Granello, a leading authority both on campus and nationally on suicide prevention.
“If you can get your heart beating a certain way ... it sends a message to your brain that it is OK to relax,” he said. “You gain control of the moment and of the stress.”
According to a national survey conducted last year by the American College Health Association, almost 30 percent of undergraduate students said they experience overwhelming anxiety. Nearly 35 percent of those responding to another survey conducted by the Center for Collegiate Mental Health said they experience moderate to severe feelings of general anxiety.
Any way you slice it, today’s students are overwhelmed, said Damon Drew, a doctoral candidate in OSU’S Counselor Education and Supervision Program who runs the SMART Lab.
“Students are always ‘on’ and believe they have to be productive 100 percent of the time,” Drew said. “They monetize their hobbies by opening Etsy shops, and instead of just enjoying their pets, they start an Instagram page for their dog. There’s this feeling that we constantly have to prove our worth.”
That can quickly escalate, he said, and that’s where programs such as those the SMART Lab offers can help. All of SMART Lab’s programs are free because it’s operated as part of the Office of Student Life, and all students pay a student-life fee.
Students can visit once or as many times as they like (there are five computer stations with headphones in a larger room, and a private room for oneon-one sessions); the idea is for students to spend about 50 minutes each time navigating one of eight learning modules and then employing those techniques on their own to reduce stress and relax every day.
Since opening in February 2017, the lab has hosted more then 1,100 biofeedback visits and served more than 100 people in the meditation or veteran-specific groups.
Drew said almost a third of students who visit have been referred by either OSU’S Counseling and Consultation Service or a faculty or staff
member. At a first appointment, students are evaluated to make sure that’s what they need. If their problems are more serious, the lab refers them to other, more immediate or appropriate programs, both on campus and off, Drew said.
“This isn’t a place where we talk about what happened in your childhood,” Damon said of the SMART Lab. “This is where we help you deal with the stressors of the day.”
About 85 percent of the students who visit say the sessions were helpful, according to the lab’s research.
Operating with a budget of about $2,500 annually (money to pay graduate assistants comes from a different fund), Granello hopes to find grants that can help expand the lab’s hours.
“We know more students are coming to college with already-higher anxiety,” he said. “There are services on campus to help them, and we are one of them. We’re here and ready.”