Not Alone
James Geisler is on a mission to connect students to mental health resources.
From the Spring 2025 issue of Sacred Heart University Magazine
By James Geisler
I first began my clinical experience as a practicum student and then an intern at the Sacred Heart University Counseling Center in 2013. In 2020, I returned in a pivotal leadership role, overseeing student mental health and wellness. My personal transition came at an unprecedented time as the global landscape of student mental health was shifting dramatically during the COVID-19 pandemic. With many unique challenges in 2020, nothing felt more pressing than students longing for connection at a time when everyone felt more disconnected than ever. While loneliness was not an unfamiliar issue in college counseling centers, the pandemic amplified these experiences of isolation and disconnection.
But 2020 was more than the year I came back home to SHU; just three months before I took the director role, I became a first-time father to a baby boy. While the field of counseling had already been deeply meaningful to me, becoming a parent personalized it even more and inevitably strengthened my support to students, families and the campus community. With the new responsibility of overseeing student mental health, I reflected on what services I would want for my own child if he were experiencing distress in college. As parents, we hope our kids will turn to us in times of loneliness, yet we accept that this may not be reality. Understanding this helped reinforce my mission to create comprehensive programming and responsive services for Sacred Heart during a time of great demand.
As I continued my work in the counseling center and as many of the issues surrounding COVID-19 began to dissipate, one issue in college mental health persisted: loneliness. By 2023, the U.S. Surgeon General highlighted the profound impact of loneliness on health, equating it to smoking 15 cigarettes a day—an alarming statistic that underscores the connection between mental and physical health. Though simple to define, loneliness is a complex phenomenon fueled by students’ time spent on social media. Paradoxically, devices that connect us to millions of people have the potential to make us feel as if we have no one.
Meaningful connections have contributed greatly to my success in overseeing student mental health, and I believe those connections make Sacred Heart University unique. When I returned to SHU in the director role, I knew that fostering relationships across departments was the only way to destigmatize mental health and create a culture where each of us sees the unique role we play in supporting student wellness. I leaned on Sacred Heart’s strong tradition of sustaining long-term, meaningful relationships while sharing my mission for years to come.
Tackling loneliness, however, is no easy feat. Studies show that for some, loneliness comes strongly in waves. Others experience loneliness in subtle yet persistent ways that accumulate and impact overall wellness at unexpected times. I believe that addressing loneliness is more than a one-time effort. It requires a series of interventions in the hope that small exposures to the concept of connection become ingrained in the discourse of student wellness. I assert that building connection and overcoming loneliness shouldn’t be something we just discuss behind closed doors in a counseling session; it should be at the forefront of our outreach efforts, discussed at colloquiums and highlighted at orientation with parents. Above everything, we must acknowledge that none of us are too distant from experiencing loneliness, and it’s from this awareness that we begin to open the doors to helping students navigate their own feelings and experiences.
Source: Active Minds, in collaboration with TimelyCare, surveyed 1,100 U.S. college students in Feb. 2024
One of the most meaningful campus activities to speak at is the annual suicide prevention walk. Its growing attendance each year serves as motivation for me to continue challenging myself to think of creative ways that students can support one another and contribute to a culture at SHU where everyone looks out for one another. This year, my message focused heavily on building connection in the fight to combat loneliness. I wanted to share my vision with students that we can overcome loneliness as a campus community. Further, I wanted to challenge everyone to find one person that evening whom they did not know and ask them, “What brought you here tonight?” Small interactions like this can draw someone further away from loneliness and toward connection.
This past fall, I moderated an expert panel of professionals at an event titled Thrive Together, in partnership with Silver Hill Hospital of New Canaan, focused on how we can foster more meaningful relationships in a fast-paced digital world. This event, which included panelists from both on and off campus, strengthened my motivation to ensure that the issues that may hinder students from having a profound and memorable college experience are addressed in a timely way and with purpose. This experience of “presence,” especially as it relates to not feeling alone, contributes greatly to student success, as noted by SHU President John J. Petillo.
In 2024, I published my first book, Thrive Year One: The Essential Mental Health Workbook for First-Year College Students, a project that I see as a gift in support of student mental health. For me, developing this resource for students meant that we no longer have to wait for them to struggle with their mental health upon entering college. This book fills a major gap by allowing students to see the issues they might encounter upon entering college and address them head-on— a solution I am confident will help lead to a strong foundation for academic success. One of the book’s most noteworthy components addresses how social media prevents students from truly embracing the college experience in their early weeks on campus and provides tailored strategies to overcome these challenges. One example is this chapter’s attempt to increase students’ awareness of how social media might trick them into believing that others are having a better time than they are.
Loneliness is a phenomenon that all humans will likely encounter at some point in their lives, and most programs coming from Sacred Heart’s Maureen Hamilton Wellness Center have an underlying foundation of building connection. For years now, Project Connect groups led by students have been operating to help facilitate more campus connections. The counseling center has partnered with Move to Heal, a non-profit that provides free weekly workouts followed by a support meeting led by one of our counselors. Even our presence at student orientation has taken a different approach—creating activities that normalize the feelings associated with transitioning to college and building cohesiveness and connection among first-year students—and this becomes infectious in the relationships they foster in all areas of their lives.
I make it a priority to be a visible presence on campus, often surrounded by colleagues with whom I enjoy ongoing collaboration, which is no surprise given my focus on relationship building. Relationships, I believe, have helped my team transform mental health support at Sacred Heart University. Through every season, our wellness staff remains steadfast in supporting student mental health and striving to unite the campus community.
Each one of us has a unique role to play in managing our own narratives around loneliness. These messages are everywhere, and we have choices to make when it comes to how much we let them impact us. Coming back to Sacred Heart in 2020 was the greatest professional opportunity of my life. Yet I, too, had to overcome messages from colleagues in the broader professional field that “it’s lonely at the top,” a somewhat normalized message and rite of passage in our culture when colleagues take leadership roles. I had a choice to either accept this or overcome it. I chose the latter and, instead of solitude on campus, found joy in the challenges of creating opportunities where we connect, find purpose and thrive—together.
James Geisler is the executive director of wellness services at Sacred Heart.
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