Mental Health Services: State's universities re-examine programs for struggling students
San Francisco Chronicle 4/19/07
But just $4.6 million extra is listed in the university's proposed budget for fiscal 2007-08, only a small fraction of the many millions the system should be adding to serve students' needs for mental health care and prevention, said Michael Young, vice chancellor for student affairs at UC Santa Barbara and co-chair of UC's Student Mental Health Committee, which is studying the issue.
Young called for a significant jump in student registration fees next year to fund much of the balance of the more than $40 million that his group believes is needed to close the gap.
"We won't stop all suicides and homicides, but what we will do is save lives," he said. "There will be young people who would have died who will not, and there will be students who would have been in pain and their pain will be lessened."
The rampage Monday that left 33 people dead at Virginia Tech showed the potential for student mental health problems to turn explosive.
Although the damage was unprecedented, the underlying issues are nothing new. Since the late 1990s, administrators at UC and other universities have been alarmed by the rising incidence of such problems as depression and anxiety.
UC administrators have been struggling to keep up with the growing demand for counseling as enrollments have grown. Such groups as graduate students and international students have emerged as particularly vulnerable and budget cuts have undermined the system's capacity to address students in crisis.
"I'm a sitting vice chancellor at a major research university observing a national phenomenon as it plays out at the University of California and as it plays out on my campus," Young said.
"I wish I weren't right," he said, "but this is our new normal."
On Wednesday, two days after the Virginia Tech massacre, students overwhelmed the urgent mental health care drop-in center at UC Berkeley.
"Everything's kind of buzzing -- a lot of what's happening across the country," said Gloria Saito, UC Berkeley's clinical director of mental health services. "It's tough. It can shake people up and make them feel more vulnerable."
California State University provides counseling services on each campus but has not surveyed its students to assess their needs.
"The counseling directors have been meeting today and this week in light of the incident at Virginia Tech," CSU spokeswoman Clara Potes-Fellow said. "I'm sure they will be assessing their procedures, as every university in the nation is."
In September, UC's systemwide mental health committee presented the governing Board of Regents with an exhaustive overview of the crisis. The report prompted a consensus that mental health services are underfunded and that the amount budgeted for counselors this year is a vital, though small, first step.
"It's the intention of our task force to begin working on each of the recommendations we made last fall and to meet with each campus individually," said Dr. Joel Dimsdale, a psychiatry professor at UC San Diego and the mental health committee's second co-chair. "There's not going to be a quick fix."
The committee's report echoed earlier studies. A UC Berkeley survey in April 2004 found that 43 percent of students answering the survey had experienced a serious emotional or stress-related problem. In March 2004, UC Berkeley's Graduate Assembly said inadequate funding for services puts students at excessive risk for depression and other mental health problems, including inability to concentrate, sleep disturbances, substance abuse and suicide.
In meetings with administrators from last fall to as late as two weeks ago, the Graduate Assembly underlined student concerns that there are too few counseling sessions available on campus and too few counselors to meet needs.
"We heard from grad students that one of the major concerns is not enough sessions," said Mariyam Cementwala, the assembly's academic affairs vice president. "My hope is that if we can learn anything from what happened in Virginia that we can avoid some of these horrific incidents with better preventive care and better education."
Cementwala also said faculty members should be trained to be more aware of students' mental health problems. Students may not show obvious signs of depression or instability, especially in their academic performance, she said.
The funding proposed in this year's UC budget is designed to give campuses the resources to add more counselors and more sessions. The money would let campuses hire psychologists, social workers and disability specialists, Young said.
The lack of services was a concern for Yenhua Ching, 23, when she experienced a difficult transition from her undergraduate education at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign to life as a doctoral student in UC Berkeley's Graduate School of Education.
"I had a lot of issues adjusting in coming here," she said. "I definitely needed a mental health counselor and I was shocked because I was only able to have three appointments. At my undergraduate institution we could see a counselor for 16 sessions."
Ching said she was offered opportunities to see counselors off campus but declined because she could not afford it.
She said such problems are common but rarely talked about. "You don't know if it's OK to show that weakness, to show that people are struggling," she said.
"There's a lot under the surface," Ching said. "Not a lot of people go on a rampage, but a lot of people do suffer. A lot of people suffer without other people knowing."
UC Berkeley's Saito said students are allowed one intake session and two follow-up sessions at no charge, plus up to four more sessions at $20 each.
"For many kinds of issues that college students face, we can do a lot of work in six sessions," she said. "Obviously, for more serious concerns, students need more than that, and we're well aware of that."