Jane Fruehwirth: An Introvert’s Questions About Students and Depression

Posted on July 2, 2019

The United States is suffering “a generational shift” in depression and suicide among young adults.

A major study this year from the American Psychological Association described a staggering spike in “serious psychological distress, major depression and suicidal thoughts” among adults between 18 and 25, far outpacing the rate for older adults. Suicide rates among college-age Americans have increased more than 30 percent in the past decade.

The rising stress is taking a toll at colleges and universities. “More than 60 percent of college students said they had experienced ‘overwhelming anxiety’ in the past year,” The New York Times reported in February, citing a survey of mental health professionals working in higher education. “Over 40 percent said they felt so depressed they had difficulty functioning.”

UNC economist Jane Fruehwirth thinks her field, which has been called the dismal science, can help combat some of those dismal statistics. The tools of her discipline, she believes, could help schools and universities cope with the emerging crisis in student mental health.

“My sense is that universities are just really struggling to respond to the need,” she said. “There are all kinds of programs being implemented, but nobody really knows what’s most effective or what’s most cost-effective. People are really in the midst of trying to figure it out.”

Colleges across the country, including UNC, are seeing a surge in demand for counseling services. In a May report to the Board of Trustees, a University task force found that “current approaches to mental health treatment, policy creation and application, and the campus culture around wellness are not sufficient for addressing the breadth and depth of the issue.”

Fruehwirth wants to help fill that gap, researching the factors that can help avoid a crisis in the first place. Much of her recent work has focused on the classroom dynamics and social habits that seem to support happier, healthier students.

“I really want to figure out how we help students develop that mentality. Can we develop some kind of small groups, some kind of mentoring groups where kids can actually support each other in developing these coping skills? Something intentional, so it’s not just reliant on chance outcomes like getting a good roommate or joining the right clubs.”

Nudging students into supportive relationships — with mentors, professors and classmates — can make a difference. A wealth of social science points to those networks as a key factor in happiness and success.

The question for colleges is how to help students develop those personal networks quicker. For all of the excitement of coming to college, the first months on campus are deeply unmooring for many students. A new place, with little structure, surrounded by strangers and away from family and friends — it can be a vulnerable moment, and Fruehwirth sympathizes.

“Maybe it helps that I’m an introvert,” she said, laughing about her own quiet persona. “For some people it just comes naturally, navigating these social crosswinds, but that’s not the case for a lot of us.”

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“My sense is that universities are just really struggling to respond to the need” for effective mental health programs.

–UNC economist Jane Fruehwirth

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She is especially interested in the influence of peers — how friends and classmates profoundly shape the school experience.

“We usually think about peer effects as being bad for kids,” she said, noting the negative connotation of terms like “peer pressure.” But her research points to the enormous upside of having good influences in a student’s social circle.

Policymakers long have known that the mix of income levels, family background and racial makeup can make a difference in the classroom. Low-income students who attend school with a mix of wealthier peers can benefit from the spillover effects of their classmates’ social capital. Keeping schools economically integrated can boost overall achievement levels.

Fruehwirth has delved into the complex data on race and mental health, showing that, in general, well-integrated classrooms where there are enough students for same-race friendships to be common are better than classrooms where some students feel racially isolated.

She wants to take it a step further. She thinks the sophisticated statistical tools of economics can help tease out the impact of “unobservable” variables, like the level of motivation and effort among a student’s classmates. Does having a highly motivated friend make someone less likely to drop out? How much does a bout of depression for one student affect the academic performance of those in her social circle?

“Part of the value economists place in terms of research is that we’re often not happy to just look at associations. What I’ve been trained to do as an economist is tease out whether that relationship is causal, whether this particular factor is actually affecting the outcome.”

In a 2018 paper, she and her co-investigators at Cambridge and the London School of Economics looked into the role of religiosity as a predictor of mental health, trying to tease out evidence of causation. By controlling for a range of other variables, they found that religiosity can be a strong buffer against depression.

As a fellow at the Carolina Population Center, Fruehwirth gets support for tackling big questions that cut across disciplines. Giving such an economist a place to work alongside sociologists, public health researchers and policy specialists is part of the group’s mandate.

“She has a really innovative research agenda,” said Elizabeth Frankenberg ’86, director of the center. “I think there have always been a set of economists interested in population issues, and increasingly, economists became interested in these micro-economic topics.”

The mission of childhood well-being has become personal for Fruehwirth. Her own children, 4 and 6, are moving into school age, and the ideals of spiritual and emotional balance run deep in her household.

Her husband, Robert, is an Episcopal priest who spent several years as the leader of a monastic order. As a scholar, Jane Fruehwirth sees parallels between the religious-seeking that is the hallmark of her faith and the intellectual-seeking that marks the college years.

“College is an age where students have these big dreams,” she said. “The college experience is such a rich place where that search is happening. I want them to be able to figure out who they really are.”

— Eric Johnson ’08

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