The College of DuPage (COD) Student Mental Health Survey of Spring 2026 revealed that students are anxious, sleep-deprived and struggling to manage their time.
From the 650 respondents who answered in the mental health portion of the survey, the biggest problem was anxiety at 69%. From the 620 respondents who answered in the behavioral health portion, 68% said their biggest problem was sleep. From the 644 respondents who answered in the life stressors portion, 64% said the biggest problem was demands on time.
The survey questions touched on mental and emotional challenges, how students’ mental health impacted academics, methods used to improve well-being, what mental health services they use and suggested changes to improve mental health services at COD.
The survey ran from March 10-23. COD Office of Research and Analytic worked with Counseling Services to gather information via email survey. The survey had similar questions to Student Mental Health Surveys from 2022, 2023 and 2025. It was sent to 18,369 enrolled students, with a total of 763 students responding (4%).
Most respondents were female (72%), between the ages of 18 and 24 (62%) and enrolled part-time at COD (53%).
In the survey, 66% of 380 respondents said they do not look for personal counseling due to financial reasons.
COD mental health counselor, Dennis Emano, said personal counseling is free for COD students. COD also offers a virtual counseling service called Telehealth. Students get the first 12 Telehealth sessions free.
COD’s counseling department is constantly forming ideas to support students, Emano said. Counselors pitch mental health programming ideas and projects on a regular basis based on data they collect from surveys and students.
“Whether it’s our own data that we collect or from the mental health survey, we’re constantly looking at that and seeing what are some of the things that we can do,” Emano said.
Figuring out what can be done has proven easier than following through on the ideas. COD’s counseling department has not been able to put their programming ideas into action due to short staff. Since there are 10 counselors, they need to prioritize counseling students and other duties before they can work on programming.
“There’s a lot that we want to do,” Emano said. “That’s the honest truth. We have a lot of ideas. Some of us have grand ideas. But when we look at our time, how little time we have, how little resources we have and little staff we have, it’s really hard for us to do those grand things.”
Emano said the COD counseling department is looking for a director of counseling and more counselors to better support students.
COD Research and Evaluation Coordinator Jennifer Matiasek is responsible for running and analyzing the survey and providing the Student Mental Health Survey results to The Courier.
By gathering information from surveys or other types of data collectors, Matiasek said she can provide insight based on the results.
Matiasek said that the previous survey in 2025, with a similar response rate, showed 80% of students having anxiety and 84% having problems with sleep. Matiasek said the lower percentages may suggest improvement among survey respondents, though the survey reflects only students who chose to respond.
She said, though 4% may seem like a low response rate, it still demonstrates a problem students face and is similar to participation in past Student Mental Health Surveys.
“It would be great to get more students to respond in an even more diverse group,” Matiasek said. “But I don’t think we can discount the challenges that students are sharing who did respond because there were almost 1,000 students. They’re still sharing challenges. They’re still sharing suggestions. [That’s] still a lot of information I think is important.”
Emano agreed that the survey is worth acting on.
“I think a 4% response rate is good enough,” Emano said. “There’s still value in the results [and] what the results are telling us, especially because they’re consistent with previous results for the most part. We have to do some awareness raising here. I don’t think we can just disregard the entire survey and not do anything about it.”
Matiasek said students reported problems such as anxiety, sleep and demands of balancing life with school. She suggests a solution to this problem.
“I think we need to do a better job of promoting what’s available and building awareness,” Matiasek said. “A lot of students said that they don’t necessarily know all the resources are available to them.”
A trend in the survey was 53% of 644 respondents said a stressor was finances. 49% of 641 respondents said they had family issues in the last 12 months in the social relationships portion.
Matiasek said that these problems are common among community college students.
“Both personal and work issues and financial issues are two of the main areas where students do experience challenges,” Matiasek said. “Family and finances are always some of the most commonly selected challenges. It gets down to just how many things students have in their lives, in particular community college students, who are trying to balance family and work.”
Although there are currently challenges to overcome, the COD counseling department has plans for how to additionally support students for a more promising future.
“We’re on the right track now,” Emano said. “It’s just taking a really long time for these changes to take place, for the action to be taken and approvals to be given. So, we’ve had to exercise a lot of patience.”
To schedule a meeting with any counseling service COD provides, contact COD’s counseling services by calling (630) 942-3330 or visit the main campus at SSC 3341.