Key points:
- Social prescribing supports students’ mental health and overall well-being
- Back to campus: Addressing students’ mental health challenges
- Why campus mental health support is critical for students
- For more news on student well-being, visit eCN’s Student Well-Being hub
A student visits the campus counseling center for the third time this semester. She’s not in crisis. She’s lonely, overwhelmed, and unsure where she fits. The counselor has 15 minutes before the next appointment and a waitlist that’s grown 25 percent since last year. What can they realistically offer?
This scenario plays out thousands of times a week at universities across the country. Nearly half of college students report feeling lonely, and 76 percent experience moderate or high levels of stress, according to the American Council on Education. Utilization of counseling services has surged 20-30 percent since 2020, yet close to 50 percent of students who screen positive for anxiety or depression never receive counseling or therapy. The scale of the crisis has outgrown the model built to address it. Students today are navigating not just academic pressure, but social, financial, and emotional stressors that the clinical model was never designed to address.
The consequences extend beyond well-being. Research consistently links a sense of belonging to student retention, and loneliness is one of the more reliable predictors of early departure. The students most at risk are often the ones quietly disengaging, not in crisis, not on anyone’s radar, but slowly losing their connection to the institution.
A growing number of institutions are asking a different question: What if we could support student well-being before students reach the counseling center, and alongside clinical care for those who do?
Social prescribing: A different approach
At its core, social prescribing is a way to connect individuals with non-clinical, community-based activities and resources to support their mental health and overall well-being. This could include activities such as museum exhibitions, nature programs, social clubs, art classes, or even physical activity initiatives. In countries like the U.K., it’s already embedded in the national health system. In U.S. higher education, the model is newer and gaining traction.
On campus, social prescribing can take several forms, including referral pathways in which counselors, residence life staff, or academic advisors connect students with curated activities and community resources. A student experiencing stress and isolation could be connected to a dance class or an improv workshop class. A student struggling with chronic illness could be matched with low-impact creative classes like pottery, painting, or group meditation.
The power of social prescribing lies in personalization. One student may benefit from joining a yoga class, while another might find more value in a weekly volunteer opportunity that provides a sense of belonging and purpose. It meets students where they are, not with a one-size-fits-all wellness program, but with something that actually fits.
The problem isn’t resources–it’s uptake
Most campuses already have activities, clubs, and community partnerships. Many institutions respond to rising demand with familiar moves: hiring another counselor, licensing a wellness app, or putting a new label on existing programming without changing how students are actually reached. These are reasonable steps, but none of them address the structural gap.
There are three barriers that consistently keep students from engaging, even when they want to. First, they don’t feel like the activity is “for them”: a permission problem. Second, they intend to go but never take the concrete steps to show up: a planning problem. Third, they’re overwhelmed by the volume of options available: a choice overload problem.
Effective social prescribing programs are designed around these barriers. Trusted messengers (peers, faculty, counselors) signal that an activity is relevant and welcoming. Helping students make a specific plan (where, when, with whom) dramatically increases follow-through. And curating a small set of personalized options, rather than handing students a directory of 200 clubs, reduces friction and drives action.
What it takes to get this right
The concept is intuitive: connect students with helpful activities. The execution is not. Institutions exploring this model should be prepared for several layers of complexity that don’t surface until you’re deep into implementation.
While universities possess a wealth of relevant stakeholders–ranging from clinical health services to cultural institutions like on-campus museums–these entities have historically operated in silos. A counselor may not know what the campus arts center is offering next month. A residence life coordinator may not have a clear pathway to connect an isolated student with a community volunteer program. Transitioning to a social prescribing model requires breaking down these barriers to create a unified ecosystem of care.
When a counseling center refers a student to a campus arts program or a community partner, student data is moving between entities with very different levels of data infrastructure. Non-clinical departments like arts, athletics, or student activities typically aren’t set up to handle HIPAA-level privacy requirements. Building that infrastructure is a prerequisite, not an afterthought.
Social prescribing also depends on a network of external partners: local arts organizations, cultural institutions, outdoor recreation groups, and wellness providers. But not every community organization is equipped to work with college students, accommodate flexible scheduling, or report on outcomes in a way the university can use. Identifying, onboarding, and maintaining quality relationships with the right partners is an ongoing operational demand, not a one-time setup.
Through the use of technology, from custom apps built to engage students and track participation to algorithms that match students to appropriate activities, social prescribing can scale across a campus of thousands. But matching students to the right activities based on their needs, preferences, and availability, then sending timely nudges to support follow-through, requires more than a student portal or a spreadsheet. Most campuses don’t have this infrastructure and building it from scratch is a significant undertaking.
When measurement is built in from the start, the results can speak for themselves. In early university social prescribing programs, 68 percent of student participants reported improved wellbeing as measured by the WHO-5, 59 percent reported reduced loneliness on the UCLA-3 Loneliness Scale, and 63 percent reported reduced behavioral health concerns on the PHQ-ADS.
Finally, because social prescribing is an iterative process rather than a singular intervention, institutions must prioritize longitudinal measurement. Success often requires multiple rounds of engagement before measurable improvements emerge, making it essential to build a robust tracking system that monitors participant progress and captures the cumulative impact of these interventions over time.
Social prescribing is not something that can be added to an already-stretched staff member’s portfolio. It requires dedicated coordination across clinical services, community organizations, technology, and measurement, and institutions that invest in that coordination upfront are better positioned to see results.
A call to action for the student mental health crisis
The student mental health crisis is real, and clinical services are a critical part of the response. But they cannot be the only part. When nearly half of the students who need support never make it to the counseling center, the answer is not just more clinicians. It’s building a broader ecosystem, one that supports students before they reach a crisis point.
Social prescribing offers a path, but it is not a simple add-on. It requires connecting community partners, campus workflows, student-facing technology, and outcome measurement into a single coordinated system. No one campus office currently owns all of those pieces. Institutions that treat this as a lightweight initiative will likely see lightweight results.
The question for higher education leaders isn’t whether students need more support. It’s whether we’re ready to invest in doing this well.
Chris Appleton is the Founder & CEO of SocialRx, a national healthcare-grade social prescribing company working with colleges and universities, health systems, payers, and community-based organizations to support individuals struggling with mental health, loneliness, and chronic disease.