The Comeback Campus: Courage, Care, and What Counts
1
Clinical, Recovery.com, Madison, United States
Popul. Med. 2026;8(Supplement Supplement 1):
ABSTRACT
INTRODUCTION:
Emerging adulthood is a developmental period marked by identity exploration, elevated risk-taking, and first encounters with mental health challenges.¹,² campus systems, however, often define “success” and “risk” through deficit-focused indicators such as gpa, credit loss, conduct violations, and crisis events. This narrow lens obscures protective factors such as flourishing, mattering, belonging, recovery capital, and basic needs security. It can inadvertently frame help-seeking and recurrence as failure rather than as part of a recovery trajectory.³-⁸
METHODS:
This interactive workshop synthesizes research on emerging adulthood, positive risk-taking, flourishing and mattering, sense of belonging, basic needs insecurity, sleep, and measurement-based care¹,³-¹² with practice-based evidence from campus mental health, advising, and recovery support. Participants are guided through brief didactic segments, live polling, small-group design sprints, and script-based micro-labs to co-create a minimum viable outcomes set and micro-interventions for advisors, faculty, residential staff, and peers.
RESULTS:
attendees are introduced to a practical framework that differentiates healthy developmental risks (leadership, disclosure, role experimentation, study abroad) from harmful risks (sleep deprivation, high potency cannabis use, unsafe sex, reckless driving, self-harm) and links these patterns to mental health, substance use, and social determinants.⁹,¹³-¹⁸ examples illustrate how brief screening, flourishing and mattering measures, and recovery-oriented indicators can be embedded into existing workflows without survey fatigue. Participants leave with role-specific scripts for belonging checks, safety microplans, and harm-reduction conversations, as well as semester-level dashboard concepts that stratify outcomes by key equity variables.³-⁸,¹²,¹⁹
CONCLUSIONS:
reframing campus success as flourishing and mattering, and treating risk as a signal to coach rather than punish, allows institutions to design recovery-affirming ecosystems that normalize recurrence, support re-entry, and convert crises into deeper connection. The model offered in this session provides concrete tools for campuses and instructors, providers, and supporters seeking to help students not only persist, but also thrive and feel that they matter.³,⁴,⁶,⁷,¹¹
Emerging adulthood is a developmental period marked by identity exploration, elevated risk-taking, and first encounters with mental health challenges.¹,² campus systems, however, often define “success” and “risk” through deficit-focused indicators such as gpa, credit loss, conduct violations, and crisis events. This narrow lens obscures protective factors such as flourishing, mattering, belonging, recovery capital, and basic needs security. It can inadvertently frame help-seeking and recurrence as failure rather than as part of a recovery trajectory.³-⁸
METHODS:
This interactive workshop synthesizes research on emerging adulthood, positive risk-taking, flourishing and mattering, sense of belonging, basic needs insecurity, sleep, and measurement-based care¹,³-¹² with practice-based evidence from campus mental health, advising, and recovery support. Participants are guided through brief didactic segments, live polling, small-group design sprints, and script-based micro-labs to co-create a minimum viable outcomes set and micro-interventions for advisors, faculty, residential staff, and peers.
RESULTS:
attendees are introduced to a practical framework that differentiates healthy developmental risks (leadership, disclosure, role experimentation, study abroad) from harmful risks (sleep deprivation, high potency cannabis use, unsafe sex, reckless driving, self-harm) and links these patterns to mental health, substance use, and social determinants.⁹,¹³-¹⁸ examples illustrate how brief screening, flourishing and mattering measures, and recovery-oriented indicators can be embedded into existing workflows without survey fatigue. Participants leave with role-specific scripts for belonging checks, safety microplans, and harm-reduction conversations, as well as semester-level dashboard concepts that stratify outcomes by key equity variables.³-⁸,¹²,¹⁹
CONCLUSIONS:
reframing campus success as flourishing and mattering, and treating risk as a signal to coach rather than punish, allows institutions to design recovery-affirming ecosystems that normalize recurrence, support re-entry, and convert crises into deeper connection. The model offered in this session provides concrete tools for campuses and instructors, providers, and supporters seeking to help students not only persist, but also thrive and feel that they matter.³,⁴,⁶,⁷,¹¹
| eISSN: | 2654-1459 |
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