Dartmouth continually strives to be a caring, inclusive community that prioritizes mental health and wellbeing and equips all its students with the resources and skills to thrive at Dartmouth and beyond.

1. Center wellbeing in all we do both inside and outside of academics.

We believe that developing the whole student is central to Dartmouth’s identity and values. Centering well-being will be accomplished by taking a holistic approach that

• prioritizes the wellbeing of our students,
• recognizes and draws upon our students’ inherent strengths,
• provides intentional and widely available support, and
• aligns our policies, environments, curricula, and resources with best practices for mental health and wellbeing.

Through this work, we will enhance students’ abilities to achieve curricular and co-curricular objectives and help to ensure their immediate and long-term success.

2. Create an inclusive community to foster mental health and well-being for students with diverse lived experiences.

As a community attentive to the nuances of diverse experiences, we will reconfigure outdated systems, practices, and paradigms and continue to create new traditions in support of mental health and wellbeing. We will foster healthy connections, and within an environment of mutual respect students will discover a sense of place and find belonging at Dartmouth.

3. Equip students with the resources and skills to navigate both success and failure with strength and confidence.

We will lower barriers to support in our environment by

• surrounding students with a well-informed network of staff, faculty, and students, trained to support students’ mental health and wellbeing,
• enhancing resources to ensure students have easy access to services, and
• redefining stereotypical notions of strength to promote healthy help-seeking behaviors.

Through the ongoing development of self-awareness, essential life skills, and supportive relationships, students will be prepared to adapt positively to the challenges they face.

4. Proactively address mental illness to aid students in reaching their goals.

Mental illness is common and takes many forms, including disordered eating and unhealthy substance use. At Dartmouth we will

• promote mental illness awareness and reduce stigma
• implement systems to identify students in need
• expand access to high-quality mental health services.

By optimizing delivery of the College’s healthcare services, bolstering peer support programs, and connecting students to appropriate external resources, we will help students manage their mental illnesses and the related fluctuations in their health.

5. Invest in innovative applications of evidence-based approaches to respond to changing environments and needs.

By listening to our community’s voices and applying an evidence-based approach to system improvement, we will use data to guide how we direct our resources to meet changing environments affecting students’ mental health and wellbeing. By also tracking meaningful outcomes, we will ensure we are making the intended improvements in student mental health and wellbeing and adapt when needed.

Definitions of key terms used above and throughout this plan can be found in Appendix A on linked PDF.