College can be filled with great experiences, happy memories, amazing opportunities and great people, but what happens when that college experience is interrupted by trauma or mental anguish? What happens when you find yourself feeling hopeless, overwhelmed, stressed, anxious, depressed, harassed or even assaulted? 

Some students (if comfortable) will reach out to friends, family, guardians or a college staff member when they begin to experience these feelings or traumatic events. Most students however do not feel comfortable expressing these new or old feelings with anyone.

In fact, 19.6% of adults currently have a mental illness (not reported), which is equivalent to nearly 50 million Americans. That's huge!

Also, did you know that 19% of women will be sexually assaulted during their time at college and 5-6% of men will experience sexual assault during college?

43% of dating college women report experiencing violent and abusive dating behaviors including physical, sexual, technology-facilitated, verbal or other forms of controlling abuse.

88% did not report the incident to staff or police. 

There is a huge whole in the Department of Education, but specifically with post-secondary students. 

Life Line will be a program created for colleges and universities. It will be an extension of Title IX that requires all colleges and universities to have a psychologist(s) on there staff roster for all post-secondary students. This program will ensure all students feel comfortable and safe reporting all incidents as well as working on mental health during there college journey. Each student will be required to attend a "Life Line" check in once a month to ensure each student has all the tools to help them mentally cope with various things during college, as well as giving students a safe space to express trauma that maybe occurring within the campus or off of the campus. 

For example, if a student is in a situation in which a current professor is making a student uncomfortable or exuding some form of abuse towards the student, the student may not feel comfortable going to a staff member, a college counselor or even the police about a professor or other staff member. That is when "Life Line" would come into action. The student would request a "Life Line" check in with the psychologist, the psychologist would then create a safe space to express there concern or incident. Depending on the incident, the psychologist will take the necessary action to ensure the students safety and continue to address possible trauma after the incident has occurred.

This is just one example, there are hundreds of different and similar examples I can give. "Life Line" will ensure the student is confident in reporting anything or asking for help. Whether that is new depression symptoms that have occurred, dating abuse, loss of interest, overwhelmed or simply needing advice "Life Line" is the answer.