Alumni and Current Students Lead the Charge to Address Campus Mental Health Issues
The fatal shootings at Virginia Tech in 2007 and Northern Illinois University (NIU) in 2008 focused public attention on the issue of mental health and college students. Concern at the nation’s colleges and universities had been growing for some time, however.
The shootings—each by students with a history of mental illness—represented extreme examples of a larger trend: An increasing number of students have been diagnosed with mental health issues before they even enroll. A 2007 Boynton Health Services survey found that more than one in four students at the University of Minnesota’s Twin Cities campus had been diagnosed with a mental illness during their lifetime; almost one in seven had been diagnosed within the past 12 months.
Those numbers didn’t surprise University counselors. “Over the years there’s just been an increasingly consistent trend that more and more students are experiencing significant mental health conditions,” says Robert Seybold, senior psychologist at University Counseling and Consulting Services (UCCS).
Seybold (Ph.D. ’80), who has been counseling students for more than three decades, says the severity of students’ diagnoses has been growing, too. When he was fresh out of the counseling and personnel psychology program (CSPP) and first working at what was called the Student Counseling Bureau, counselors would only broach the topic of suicide if there were some hint of concern, he explains. “Now that’s an automatic question that we ask every student in the initial interview,” he says.
Seybold is one of five alumni from the Department of Educational Psychology who make up the UCCS clinical staff. They provide academic and career counseling, as well as mental health and crisis counseling. UCCS also works closely with the Boynton Health Service Mental Health Clinic, which focuses primarily on psychological and psychiatric counseling. Boynton’s mental health providers include five alumni from the College of Education and Human Development, four of whom graduated from the School of Social Work, as well as a current doctoral student in the CSPP program.
Not their parents’ college experience
“There’s
been a consistent
trend that more
students
are experiencing
significant
mental health conditions.”
–ROBERT SEYBOLD,
SENIOR PSYCHOLOGIST,
UNIVERSITY COUNSELING
AND CONSULTING SERVICES
enlarge photo
College students today face significantly greater levels of stress than their parents, says Salina Renninger (Ph.D. 1998), a senior psychologist at UCCS. The sources of that stress include relationships, pressure to graduate sooner and take more credits each term, rising tuition and dwindling financial aid, and family conflicts—sometimes around money. As a result, more students show signs of depression, anxiety, panic attacks, and even post-traumatic stress disorder.
“Life is just much more complicated for the majority of students that I see relative to what my experience as an undergraduate was,” Seybold agrees. As an example, he shares the story of a freshman he counseled who was distressed over a conflict with her roommate. “The crux of the issue was they both had 25-inch TVs and there wasn’t room for both of the TVs in a dorm residence,” he says.
While the issue may seem frivolous, Seybold says it’s just another example of “how we have higher expectations of life, how much stuff we’re going to have, how fast we accumulate it.”
As part of the doctorate in counseling psychology, which prepares counselors and advisers for higher education and other settings, the college has also augmented coursework on psychological disorders and their assessment. Students and faculty also discuss how to prevent the kind of tragedies that occurred at Virginia Tech and NIU, says professor Michael Goh, who leads the Ph.D. program. “No incident passes without discussion.”
At least half of the CEHD counseling track students undertake their practicums at the University, where they benefit from the placement of so many alumni in campus counseling settings, adds Goh. All of the advanced practicum students currently placed at UCCS are students in the counseling and student personnel psychology program, as are the majority of the staff in the Student and Academic Support Service Center there, which helps students improve learning skills. In Boynton, one MSW student is pursuing her practicum, as well.
A national trend
Demand for student mental health counseling at Boynton Health Center and UCCS rose by 9 percent last year alone, from approximately 1,300 students to 1,450. To address the trend, the University added counseling positions and expanded outreach to students and to the faculty and staff who may be able to help. The Office for Student Affairs also created a Provost Committee on Student Mental Health to develop a coordinated, cross-campus approach to the problem.
“We’ve helped
some who
needed assistance
get it.
That’s the bottom
line.”
—AMELIOUS WHYTE,
CHIEF OF STAFF,
OFFICE
OF STUDENT AFFAIRS
enlarge photo
One outcome of the committee’s work was the launch of a portal for student mental health. The site allows students to do self-assessment online for depression, anxiety, post-traumatic stress, eating disorders, and alcohol abuse, and consolidates information about campus resources in one location.
“That was probably one of our biggest achievements over the last couple of years,” says Amelious Whyte, chief of staff for the vice provost for student affairs, a member of the committee, and a doctoral candidate in the Department of Educational Policy and Administration. “Now we’re looking at what we can do about training for faculty and staff around these issues.”
The Stamp Out Stigma campaign is one way the University is encouraging faculty, staff, and other students to intervene if they see a student in trouble. The initiative was created to reduce the stigma and myths around mental health issues that might prevent students from seeking assistance, or faculty from approaching a student who needs help. Counselors are also training faculty and staff to spot and respond to students’ mental health issues.
“My experience is that faculty are hungry for information because, even if they’re not noticing and approaching a student, students are telling them things when they come to talk to them,” Renninger says.
After the Virginia Tech shooting, the University also created a Behavioral Consultation Team made up of health care professionals and representatives from other University departments to advise faculty or staff on students who might be a danger to themselves or to others, as in the case of one student who wrote “This is when I kill myself” in response to an exam question.
“We haven’t had someone who was, say, at the level of Virginia Tech that we’ve kind of averted,” says Whyte. “But the other side is I think we’ve helped some people who needed some assistance get it. I think that’s the bottom line.”