b
Between 2010 and 2016, the number
of students seeking on-campus
counseling shot up by 30 percent—
more than five times the growth of
overall college enrollment. The
result: By 2018, 34 percent of school health
centers reported wait times, per the
Association for University and College
Counseling Center Directors (AUCCCD).
For students on those lists, the average
wait time was 17 business days. But at some
schools, it stretched to 34.7 days. That’s
seven weeks, FYI, or half a semester.
“We’re hearing it more and more,” says
Alison Malmon, the founder and executive
director of Active Minds, a network of
student-run groups that promotes mental
he a lt h aw a r e ne s s. “ Wh a t u s e d t o b e a
problem of a two-week wait time has now
become four to five weeks.”
Cosmo’s own data confirms these stats.
Among the college students we talked to
who had asked for counseling, 61 percent
said it took a week or more to see someone;
21 percent said more than two weeks.
“The longer people wait, the fewer of them
show up,” says Joe Parks, MD, medical direc-
tor at the National Council for Behavioral
Health. In his own practice, he decreased no-
shows from 30 percent to 5 percent when he
started scheduling patients the same week
they called. (In Cosmo’s survey, 44 percent of
respondents agreed that a wait put them off
the idea of getting help alto-
gether.) For students who are
far from home, especially,
“long wait times can increase
feelings of hopelessness,
heightened anxiety, and more
sadness and depressive symp-
toms,” says NYC-based child
and family psychologist Jen-
nifer L. Hartstein, PsyD. “This
could lead to acting out in
risky ways.”
Last December, a student at
Rowan University in New
Jersey died by suicide in an
off-campus parking garage.
It ’s i mp o s s i ble t o k now w h a t ,
if anything, could have pre-
vented this tragedy, but Row-
an’s wait time for counseling
services—reported to be
months—was no secret. In
the wake of his death, grad
student Summer Dixon posted an online
petition arguing that the school “NEEDS
better mental health resources!” (Rowan
says that only students whose cases have
been identified as “non-urgent” face possi-
ble wait times.)
“I have personally struggled with my own
mental demons,” Summer wrote. “When
seeking out resources, ones that Rowan
openly advertises, I found a giant wall. A
wall preventing me from getting the help I
need.” At Northwestern University in Illi-
nois, after four deaths by suicide in 2018,
student protesters took to the streets to call
out their school’s mental health resources.
ASHTON, 21
The New School,
New York City
HER STRUGGLE
“I was having panic
attacks. There were
weeks when it was
hard to get out
of bed. I’d skip
class a lot.”
HER WAIT TIME
“Three weeks.
They were pushing
group sessions. But
I felt like that would
make me feel like
my feelings weren’t
valid. There are
always going to be
people who have it
worse than me.”*
*The New School responds: “As the demand for
mental health services continues to increase at
university counseling centers across the country, we
have significantly expanded the services available to
our students. This includes increasing counseling ser-
vices by 60 percent to provide students with faster
and greater access to mental health providers.”
