When Kirk Dougher, a clinical psychologist at WashU, gets an email from a parent worried about their child’s health, he first contacts the student to see how he can help. This long-standing practice captures Dougher’s belief that the college transition is a time for students to take ownership of their own health and well-being.
Or, as Dougher put it: “We often work with people who feel like they’re out there trying to slay their own dragons. Our job is not to eliminate the dragons, but to give students dragon-riding lessons.”
Dougher is the associate vice chancellor for health and well-being in the WashU Division of Student Success and an expert on student wellness and well-being. Though the two qualities are often equated, Dougher said the distinction is crucial. While wellness is simply the absence of sickness, well-being is something bigger: a student’s capacity to manage stress, navigate a system and grow into a person who can handle what comes next.
In this Q&A, Dougher discusses the resources that students can find in university health centers; well-being practices for incoming students; and why students who are allowed to fail a little now graduate with far more than a clean bill of health.
Why is it important for students to manage their own healthcare?
Knowing how to navigate the healthcare system early on is really to a student’s advantage because they’re going to be able to carry that skill with them throughout their lives. University health services are dedicated to educating students about the healthcare system while also providing care — explaining how you get into the portal to access medical records, how to schedule a follow-up appointment, what your explanation of benefits from your insurance company means. We want to help students to grow confident in their ability to do these things for themselves.
What advice do you have for new students who will, perhaps for the first time, be managing their own sleep, meals and health?
There’s a really easy answer to that question that everybody knows, but nobody is good at: eating, sleeping and exercise. We’re always good at one of them, some of us are good at two of them, and almost nobody is good at all three. And that’s an issue, because you’re learning to navigate your own schedule of sleep, social life and homework while you suddenly no longer have parents watching over you. Students don’t often understand the depth at which their diet, sleep and exercise impact them. But the thing that science tells us is that prioritizing health also results in better academic performance. Our grades are better, our retention is better, our testing is better. So the best thing is to get consistent with your habits. It’s when we start doing irregular things that we get dysregulated in some way.
Should students change doctors and pharmacies when they move to college?
I would start with a call to your campus health center. They will provide you with great options, advice and assistance. One helpful mindset switch is to realize that you will spend more time at college than at home over the next four years, so your primary providers and pharmacy should be nearby. Considering college your home helps to solidify how you seek and get your care.
What is your message to parents as their students leave for college?
The key here is to develop good communication. Let students know you are there to support them and see if they are open to your help. But ultimately, they should make their own decisions and be the ones that lead. I say to students, ‘Take charge, see how it goes, and if you mess it up, well, we can try it again.’ There aren’t many things you can’t do over and learn and grow from.
We frequently want to jump to advice-giving and problem-solving rather than talking things through and letting students come to their own conclusions. Additionally, as parents, we need to know and be OK with the fact that our students are going to make mistakes. That is part of the growth process, and we need to be behind them in everything, but far enough back that they can do it on their own until they want to turn to us for help.
Read more advice about the college transition in WashU Experts: A guide for new college students.
