Some schools don’t have the money to hire
more staff. Others arguably do but haven’t allo-
cated the funds for it. (Some colleges, like the
University of Iowa, now charge students a men-
tal health fee on top of tuition—but even this
hasn’t totally eliminated wait times.) Location
can make a difference too. In rural areas, where
there are few trained mental
health professionals in the
community, “that trickles onto
campuses as well,” Schrier says.
Most schools do prioritize
students who say they’re in
imminent danger. But not all
students can do this. Some
downplay their symptoms,
since they’re so common. “No
one’s sleeping. No one’s eating,”
says Leah Goodman, a visiting clinical instruc-
tor who designed and teaches a course on men-
tal health and wellness at the University of
Illinois at Chicago. “Students are like, ‘It’s fine,’
when more often than not, it’s not fine.”
Still, Schrier says it’s unrealistic to expect
that everyone can get therapy on demand: “I
don’t call my dentist’s office and hear the
dentist say, ‘We’re not doing anything right
now, if you want to come by.’” Craig, of UT, says
students tend to resist group therapy at first
but then ultimately end up liking it.
For Emily, 23, a lack of access to regular one-
on-one therapy was one reason she transferred
out of Cooper Union in New York City to a com-
munity college in 2016. Anxious, depressed,
and sleepless, she was initially able to see a
therapist weekly. But after a semester off, she
returned to find a new two-session limit, after
which she was “outsourced,” she says, to an off-
campus provider whose office was far away and
had few convenient appointments. “It got to the
point where I stopped going,” she says.
After that, “my mental health went so
downhill.” She had been sexually assaulted the
previous summer and felt alienated in her
male-dominated engineering program. “My
schoolwork was taking119
Cosmopolitan November 2019Craig, PhD, senior associate director for
clinical services at UT’s Counseling and
Mental Health Center, says any student who
seeks help can see a counselor immediately
but that they might then be referred off
c a mp u s or t o s e r v ic e s l i ke g r oup t he r a p y.
The center then helps deal with insurance
and transportation.)
Schools say they’re happy more students
are asking for help but that they just lack the
resources to provide ongoing individual
therapy to everyone who wants it. “Face-to-
face, weekly, individual counseling is a
f a i rly h i g h le ve l of c a r e ,” s ay s S ch r ie r.
UT, for example, says 14 percent of its 51,000
students, or more than 7,000 people, seek
mental health help each year (in an AUCCCD
report, the average for large universities was
between 6 percent and 8 percent), but the
school has fewer than 30 full-time counsel-
ors. A majority of counseling center direc-
tors across the country don’t have enough
psychiatrists to treat the need on their cam-
puses, per the AUCCCD.
FIGHT TO CHANGE POLICIES
Go to ActiveMinds.org and check out the handy
Tra n s f o r m Yo u r C a m p u s g u i d e. I t h a s t i p s o n l o b b y i n g
y o u r s c h o o l f o r m o r e m e n t a l h e a l t h r e s o u rc e s a n d
for policies like better leaves of absence for students
struggling with mental health issues.VOLUNTEER FOR A COUNSELING PROGRAM
An anonymous peer-to-peer chat line called Lighthouse was founded
by a student committee at Georgetown University in 2016. At the
University of Michigan, meanwhile, the Wolverine Support Network
hosts student-led support groups and stress-busting events. Check to see
if similar groups are popping up on your and your friends’ campuses.of students who
sought mental
health help
were deterred
by the wait.44
%COSMOSOURCE: POLL^Continued on page 136KELLY, 21
Ithaca College,
Ithaca, New York
HER STRUGGLE
“Before college, I’d
been diagnosed
with PTSD,
generalized anxiety
disorder, and
depression.”
HER WAIT TIME
“I was told two to
three weeks. So I
went to our local
emergency room
instead.”