On-the-Ground—Advocating for Student Mental Health: The Power of Data and Programs

Mental health challenges continue to plague Illinois’ students, permeating the fabric of our school communities in both the K-12 and postsecondary spaces. While student mental health impacts every type of student, two professionals discuss why Illinois cannot ignore how students from marginalized communities are uniquely affected by these issues. 

Making the Case for Data

One such community is the LGBTQ+ student population. Daniel Wilson, a PhD candidate in the Policy Studies in Urban Education program in the College of Education at the University of Illinois Chicago argues for increased, quality assessment of these populations in the postsecondary sector. 

Pulling from national datasets, Wilson recently submitted a paper examining the impacts of financial hardship and housing instability on mental health and academic performance in LGBTQ+ Black Indigenous People of Color (BIPOC) student communities. He found that a lack of access to these basic needs led to diminished mental health, prompting a negative perception of their sense of belonging in the larger campus community. When compounded, these factors hurt academic success. These impacts were even greater for transgender and non-binary BIPOC students. At the Illinois state level, this also rings true. According to Advance Illinois’ The State We’re In 2025: A Report on Public Education in Illinois, 63.2% of LGBTQ+ students and 75.9% of transgender college students felt that their emotional or mental challenges have more recurring ramifications on their academics. In 2024, 46.5% of postsecondary students in Illinois reported their mental health has impacted their academic performance in the last month, an increase from 24.6% in 2007. While sobering, this data should compel Illinois to make strides toward more intentional assessment of their LGBTQ+ student communities, specifically at the institutional level.

Wilson highlights that data on LGBTQ+ students is often not institutionalized across educational systems and assessment methods are often incomplete and inadequate. For example, gender identity is often collected on a binary system and sexual orientation is often not collected at all. Without data that accurately measures how mental health concerns distinctly affect LGBTQ+ students, institutions cannot provide resources and services designed to mitigate the impact of these challenges. Put plainly- LGBTQ+ students’ experiences become invisible. Wilson reflects “It is important that policy makers think of ways to accurately and meaningfully collect data on LGBTQ+ people so that they are able to be visible within data systems.” 

Wilson reflects that while it is not misleading to say that Illinois is supportive of LGBTQ+ communities, LGBTQ+ students in Illinois do face barriers to basic needs that are detrimental to their mental health. As an advocate for improved assessment of LGBTQ+ students, he contends that data can forge meaningful partnerships in service to these communities. “LGBTQ+ data needs to be institutionalized...it could be used to inform [the exact] number of LGBTQ + students that are experiencing food insecurity, housing insecurity, so how can we then ensure that we are building partnerships and cultivating a community of care to support LGBTQ+ communities.” But before those partnerships and programs are built, good data must be collected. 

It's clear that the role of data is significant. When collected and assessed correctly, it can be a powerful impetus for programmatic development uniquely designed to meet student mental health needs. Ngozi Harris, Director of Program and Staff Development for the Working on Womanhood (WOW) program at Youth Guidance, speaks to the realm of possibilities when data is put into action. 

Data in Action: Strong Student Programming

Founded in 2011 by a group of female social workers led by former Youth Guidance Director Gail Day, WOW is a school-based counseling program that supports young girls in grades 6-12 who have been exposed to trauma in the development of their social-emotional competencies. The program is informed by Cognitive-Behavioral, Acceptance Commitment, and Narrative Therapy and is specifically structured as a group counseling program to address the social isolation commonly felt among young girls.  One of WOW’s core values is providing opportunity for students to be in community with their peers and to learn emotional intelligence. When schools reported the impact of the Becoming a Man (BAM) program’s group counseling for its male students, the potential of what would become WOW became even more apparent. 

WOW continues to be critical given that mental health challenges among K-12 students in Illinois have persisted, as highlighted by The State We’re In 2025 report. Increasing percentages (29.6% in 2009 to 40.4% in 2023) of students in Illinois have reported feeling sadness and hopelessness. More specifically, female high school students are more likely to experience these feelings, with 51.6% of female students reporting feelings of sadness and hopelessness compared to 25% of male students in 2023.

Echoing Wilson’s arguments regarding the postsecondary sector, Harris further underscores how powerful a student’s sense of belonging can be in determining their academic performance. Primarily serving young, Black and Latina girls in under resourced Chicago communities, Harris notes that WOW removes the burden on students to find a sense of belonging, which in turns cultivates space for them redirect their energy into learning: “We know that trauma will impact how you are able to engage in education, how you will be able to engage in relationships...when you experience trauma, it starts to rewire your brain to see the world as a threat. If you’re walking around seeing the world as a threat, everything becomes a threat. That means all your energy, all your resources are focused in on ‘I'm here, I’m locked in on surviving. I’m doing whatever it takes to survive, mentally, physically, emotionally.’ It is unreasonable to expect students carrying such immense burdens to engage fully in a math or English course.”

Prior to the pandemic, WOW conducted mental health assessments to screen for anxiety, trauma, depression, and PTSD exposure. A core part of the WOW model, these assessments informed how to grow the program. During the shift back to in-person programming, WOW refined its curriculum to better incorporate best practices that can support students’ feelings of social isolation and ongoing anxieties caused by adversities faced during pandemic. For example, WOW has refined its curriculum to include sessions dedicated to unpacking the complex role of social media in young women’s lives. Participants can explore how social media can be incorporated into their lives healthily, with the understanding that social media can serve as both as an escape as well as a trigger. 

Harris notes that due to broader community issues related to resource availability, schools are the ideal space for reaching students. Students facing trauma exposure often carry familial and work responsibilities that limit the time available to join counseling programs after the school day.

Looking Ahead

It is imperative to acknowledge that there are community-led efforts in Illinois to address mental health related concerns for LGBTQ+ and students of color, as demonstrated in the protest against UI health system’s pause on gender affirming care for patients under 19 years old. As the new findings on student mental health and well-being in Illinois suggest, it is equally important to recognize that there is substantial opportunity for both the state of Illinois and education institutions to expand how they mitigate these challenges. Building a healthy foundation means creating assessment methods that capture evolving nuances related to identity, institutionalizing that data, and funding programs like WOW that reflect what the data shows. Strong data and programming are core pillars to building resilient student communities, which ultimately supports their holistic success. 

Isabel Enad is a Senior Community Engagement Associate for Advance Illinois.

Federal Impact—Funding and Programs that Support Student Learning and Needs

Dawn Bates, a long-time second-grade teacher and Teach Plus Illinois fellow, brings insights from both the classroom and her fellowship. With several years of teaching experience, Dawn is thinking about how shifts in federal support and funding may affect student learning, basic needs, and opportunities beyond the classroom. 

Through her Teach Plus fellowship, which focused on grades K–5, she worked on a project aimed at building teacher confidence in teaching science. While the findings are complete, the team is still finalizing how they will present them to the Illinois State Board of Education (ISBE), especially as science education (STEM) often lacks professional development and funding compared to subjects like math and reading. She has also helped bring coding to the early grades, making it accessible to students younger than third grade, and recently wrote a piece about the importance of coding. She hopes funding will continue to support these programs. 

Dawn’s school community has benefited from programs made possible by funding, but she worries these could disappear as there are students that rely on programs for free breakfast and lunch, eye care, and access to technology. She is glad her second-grade students have take-home computers and access to educational websites and apps that extend their learning beyond the school day but worries that cuts could jeopardize these supports. 

In addition, Dawn thinks initiatives like Grow Your Own and Golden Apple are important and believes continued investment is essential in supporting aspiring educators along with stipends for student teachers during their student teaching experience. Especially amid federal funding cuts that could impact the pipeline of future educators. In her own district, she is encouraged by the opportunity for teachers to pursue and maintain National Board Certification and hopes that funding to support this certification continues.  

Dawn’s story is a reminder that educators are not only teaching but constantly working to ensure students receive the tools and resources they need to thrive. 

Eucarol Juarez is the Senior Communications Associate for Advance Illinois.

Bringing Visibility to the Impacts of Federal Changes on Illinois Education

This month, news dropped that the Illinois Board of Higher Education (IBHE) and at least six universities in our state were suspending a scholarship program that the U.S. Department of Justice called unconstitutional for using race as a qualification.

It was hard to find the name of the program that was suspended – even in the DOJ’s press release – but having confirmed it with a number of credible sources including a program participant, the effort is the Diversifying Higher Education Faculty (DFI) program, an initiative intended to increase the number of minority full-time tenure track faculty and staff at Illinois’ two- and four-year, public and private colleges and universities. 

Decades of research show that when educators share racial and ethnic identities with their students, student academic and non academic outcomes improve. At the college level, student and faculty/staff diversity play a considerable role in underrepresented students’ decision to stay in school. But according to IBHE, ‘the average student attending a public college or university outside the City of Chicago is unlikely to have more than one course with an African American faculty member and unlikely to have even one course with a Latino faculty member during his or her college years.’ This mismatch in representation isn’t unique to Illinois, but plays out in communities across our country and stifles what’s possible for our students and those who seek to teach and mentor them. 

In an effort to ensure that the many and varied impacts of federal changes on education do not go unnoticed or unheard - like the details of the DFI news slipping between the cracks - we are both listening for and actively gathering narratives from students, families, educators, providers, system leaders, and researchers who are living through the effects of education policy changes on their work and lives. But we need your help.

If you are interested in sharing your story for us to uplift on our blog, on social, and our ever-expanding newsletter list of lawmakers, education, researchers, philanthropists, journalists and more, please complete the form linked below. You may use your real name, a pseudonym, or simply list “anonymous.” We only ask that you provide a valid email address so we can follow up with you. 

It is crucial that these experiences are shared so that others may gain awareness and insight into what is happening and how our system, the people who power it, and the people served by it are being affected but also responding to changes. 

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