Students Increasingly Seek Mental Health Assistance from Burdened Department
by Sarina Alley
Salem, Mass., May 11, 2017— Loud music can be heard throughout the third floor of Bowditch Hall, a first-year residence building at Salem State University (SSU). Shouting can be heard between songs, and often a shriek cuts through the music entirely. Around 1 a.m. Cordelia* leaves her room to go to the restroom a floor away, clutching her phone, the number for Campus Police pre-dialed and ready to call.
“It’s the only way I can feel safe going to the bathroom,” she said.
Cordelia, a senior, has been diagnosed with generalized anxiety since early elementary school, and five years ago was diagnosed with severe depression. These mental illnesses affect her daily life, making tasks such as leaving her room and going to the restroom or going out to see friends extremely difficult.
Cordelia is not alone in her diagnoses.
A study done by American College Health Association in Spring 2016 found that 59.1 percent of college students had “felt overwhelming anxiety” at any time within the last 12 months, and 37.5 percent had “felt so depressed that it was difficult to function” within the same time frame.
However, the study notes, only 17.0 percent of students were diagnosed or treated by a professional for their anxiety, and 14.0 percent were diagnosed or treated for depression. These numbers are not uncommon even while the number of students seeking treatment for mental health rises.
Elisa Castillo, the Assistant Dean of Students for Wellness, admitted that she has been seeing this upward trend of active mental health conditions and of those seeking treatment.
“Counseling and Health Services sees about 600 students a year, which is about 10 percent of our student body,” said Castillo. “The ones who come in are mostly undergraduate students.”
However, the university is not equipped to provide long term care for these students, and the services are there to provide “short term therapy,” The center is unable to see students on a weekly basis and still serve everyone, Castillo noted.
These limitations are what made Cassandra,* a junior at the SSU, be unable to have the counseling sessions she needed.
“My first semester of college I would see a counselor [at school] every week and they helped me adjust,” she said. “Once I had my mental breakdown I went there for a couple weeks but they’re very big on outsourcing, so I went without psychiatric help because I couldn’t afford to outsource.”
While SSU does work with outside offices to try and provide students with therapists to seek treatment, it is often difficult for students to find an office that takes their insurance, or students do not have insurance at all.
Cassandra remained undiagnosed until last semester when she was hospitalized after being deemed a threat to herself. After she was hospitalized, she was diagnosed with Bipolar Type 2, which means her moods go from hyper-manic to depressive.
“I think I would have been diagnosed and medicated a lot sooner if they had kept me in the system,” said Cassandra. “I had shown the symptoms of bipolar but everyone thought I had depression.”
The inability to service every student long-term can partially stem from the ratio of counselor to student. The international standard is one full-time mental health professional for every 1,500 students. Although SSU usually meets this standard, the school is in a transition year, so there are not the required amount of full-time professionals on staff, according to Castillo.
“Our staffing is part-time currently, but we’re in the process of hiring new counselors,” she said.
Currently there is one full-time licensed psychologist, two part-time licensed psychologists, several clinical fellows who only require more hours to complete their training, and three to four advanced graduate interns. While this group of professionals do their best to help the students in need on campus, there are still some students that do not believe they had a support system.
In an anecdotal survey of 21 undergraduate students at SSU, 38 percent of them said that they do not believe they have a strong support system on campus. Ninety-five percent said they knew about the services. Although this information is anecdotal, it still showcases that students are feeling a lack of support from the on-campus services.
For Cordelia, while Counseling and Health Services have been helpful, they are not able to evaluate her for another existing condition.
“I’m looking into getting evaluated to see if I have agoraphobia, which is the fear of public spaces, or PTSD,” she said. “I’ve lived through probably four separate instances of domestic abuse within my immediate household, and more instances with other family members.”
Because of her past experience with domestic abuse, the sounds of unseen residents yelling and banging on walls will often trigger panic attacks for Cordelia, creating an immediate concern about how she is going to get to a safe place.
“It’s gotten to the point that I don’t feel safe within my building, let alone my own room,” she said.
With the rise of students seeking help for mental health conditions, and the inability for counselors on campus to see students long-term, it is hard to say how universities will grow to meet the needs of their student bodies.
Even if universities expand their counseling services, will they still abide by the short-term therapy rule, and if they do, what will happen to the students who cannot afford to be outsourced?
