Miso Mbuli - The Hidden Mental Health Crisis Inside Disability (And Why Universities Are Failing Students)

Miso Mbuli is a Student Access Coordinator and disability inclusion advocate working within the Universal Accessibility and Disability Services (UADS) unit, where she supports students living with physical, sensory, intellectual, and mental health disabilities in higher education.Most universities only start thinking about accommodation when a student with a disability walks through the door. By then, it's already too late. Miso works in a space where the word "disability" is still treated as a stigma — especially in communities where the concept barely exists in the cultural vocabulary. But here's what she's discovered on the ground: the link between disability and mental health isn't a side note. It's the whole story. People with disabilities face social isolation, discrimination, and systemic exclusion — and those conditions quietly manufacture depression, anxiety, and trauma. The disability and the mental health condition become inseparable, and the system was never designed to treat them as one.Expect to learn what disability actually means and why the definition is broader than most people think, why people living with disabilities are at significantly higher risk of developing mental health conditions, how social exclusion and being "unseen" by a system drives people deeper into mental health crises, what the reasonable accommodation policy is and how it changes the academic experience for students with disabilities, why universities need to build inclusive systems before students with disabilities arrive — not after, how Miso personally approaches students living with mental health conditions using empathy, respect, and an open-door policy, why mental health conditions like depression, schizophrenia, and anxiety can legally qualify as disabilities, how a coordinator goes beyond referrals and walks students directly into the support they need, and much more.This conversation will change the way you see disability — and make you question how many people around you are quietly falling through the cracks.