The Panther Newspaper: Managing mental health, a full time commitment
With every morning, another wave of panic and anxiety flooded her body — paralyzing her before the nausea and pain took hold.
For former sophomore Tyler Webster, the anxiety attacks first started after Thanksgiving break. After multiple trips to the health center, Webster said she was advised to go next door to the Student Psychological Counseling Services.
“I never experienced any form of anxiety before — I’d always been the happy one,” Webster said. “I really wasn’t in a good spot and didn’t understand why I was feeling the way I was.”
Webster is not alone. Many students suffering from forms of psychological distress have sought help from Chapman’s counseling services to help them gain control of their daily lives. Due to this influx of clients, the counseling center has taken steps to maximize its resources and help as many students as possible.
The amount of students seeking counseling has not only increased on Chapman’s campus, but nationally as well. According to a recent study by the Cooperative Institutional Research Program at the University of California, Los Angeles, 9.5 percent of college students frequently felt depressed during the past year, a 3.4 percent increase from 2009.
The study reported that students who are feeling depressed are more likely to seek counseling and last year, campus counseling centers across the country reported a record number of visits, as well as increased wait times.
After scheduling an appointment with the counseling center, Webster said she was seen for a screening and diagnosed with mild to medium anxiety. Webster said she was given suggestions about how to deal with the anxiety, but was told that she would have to wait until after winter break for another counseling session. Already considering withdrawing from Chapman to pursue a real estate license in Washington, Webster said she didn’t schedule any further appointments and saw a doctor when she moved back home.
Jeanne Walker, the director of Chapman’s Student Psychological Counseling Services for the past 29 years, said it’s common for mental illnesses to manifest between the ages of 18 and 25.
“The students are pushed every minute and don’t have any free time,” Walker said. “Anxiety is the number one reason students are coming in and it’s because of the pressure to do well.”
History of the Counseling Center
When Walker first arrived at Chapman 35 years ago, there was no psychological counseling center. She worked in academic counseling and found that personal issues were getting in the way of students’ success. Walker said she approached the dean of students at the time with a request to form a counseling service and was told that she was it. As more students came in to see her and she hired more staff, Walker was able to help the counseling services grow into what they are today.
Even so, Walker does most of the initial 30-minute screenings herself in order to evaluate the severity of each student’s case.
Mirroring the study done at UCLA that revealed more college students have sought counseling, Chapman experienced a similar growth that stretched the center’s resources.
Junior public relations and advertising major Andrea Resnick felt this firsthand after she was diagnosed with clinical depression during the fall of 2013. After debilitating attacks of depression forced her to leave school, Resnick said she saw a psychiatrist in San Francisco who prescribed her Prozac and told her she should meet with a therapist when she returned to Chapman. When Resnick went to the counseling center a week later, she was told it was booked and that she should expect an opening in around two months.
“That was really upsetting,” Resnick said. “At the time, I had told some people I was depressed, I stopped eating and developed anorexia.”
Resnick said someone had noticed a change in her behavior and anonymously emailed DeAnn YocumGaffney, associate vice chancellor of student affairs and associate dean of students, about her situation. Resnick met with Gaffney and said that within days, she received an email from psychological services informing her that there was a spot available.
“I really needed help and if not for the phone call from DeAnn, I don’t know where I would be right now,” Resnick said.
Walker said particular cases are given priority.
“If they’ve experienced a trauma within a certain period of time…if they’re thinking about suicide, if they’re thinking about hurting someone else…all of those things become priority,” Walker said. “They’re seen, if not that day, the next.”
Jerry Price, vice chancellor of student affairs and dean of students, said the number of students seeking counseling has been gradually increasing every year.
Walker said the increase can be attributed to a generation that’s more comfortable discussing metal health issues.
“The stigma of going to therapy is less than it was— certainly a lot less than when I used to be here and students were sneaking in the back door,” Walker said.
However, the increase in students seeking therapy forced the counseling center to institute waitlists to deal with the demand. Price said the administration knew about the waitlist but didn’t understand why it existed.
“I had done my own amateur checking with colleges about their staffing and it seemed like we were pretty comparable staff-wise,” Price said. “So why were we having waitlist issues?”
It was this inability to understand the waitlist that motivated the university to seek out an outside assessment of Chapman’s counseling service, Price said. Conducted in January, the review revealed that Chapman’s number of staff was consistent with other medium-sized private colleges, but it caused Price to look into the multiple models of counseling services that could be offered.
Where is the counseling center at now?
Walker said there are currently one or two people on the waitlist, compared to almost 60 people at the same time last year.
“When somebody asks for help, that’s when they need the help,” Walker said. “This semester is the first time in a long time that we’ve been able to provide that .”
The smaller waitlist is due to the eight counseling sessions limit implemented last year. Although this limit exists, Walker said the counseling center would never deny a student who’s clearly in need of its services.
For Resnick, the session limit was difficult to accept because she had developed a relationship with her individual counselor.
“Given that I cried through my first two sessions, I felt pressured to resolve my life in eight weeks because then I would lose this resource that was helping me get through my mental disorder,” Resnick said. “She knew all of my problems and things going on with my life and it gave me anxiety thinking about having to tell another person.”
Resnick said that her counselor continued to meet past her eighth session. Thinking she was taking spots from other students made Resnick feel uncomfortable, but she said she didn’t want to invalidate her own mental health needs.
The counseling center’s six-person staff often has trouble with the session limit too, according to Walker.
“The national recommendation for a full-time counselor would be 65 percent of their time, so that comes out to seeing 24 to 25 students a week,” Walker said.
Although she considers their schedules to be full, Walker said almost all of her staff takes on additional clients and the problem is that this is too big of a workload for them.
“I have to tell them sometimes, ‘You need to take a break, this is too much,’” Walker said.
Some students need to be referred off-campus such as if the session limit is reached and the student isn’t a severe case, or if the counseling center doesn’t have the proper resources to help that person.
“I know we’re doing the right thing because it would be unethical and wrong to keep them here if we’re not able to provide them with what they need,” Walker said. “Hopefully they have the resources to be able to pay for it.”
Walker has personally referred about three or four students to off-campus facilities this semester because those students needed specialized treatment that the counseling center doesn’t offer.
Chapman’s counseling program has about one counselor for every 1,600 students, including graduate students, Walker said. Most universities similar to Chapman’s size have a ratio of about one to 1,200, she said.
Price said Chapman does fall in the range of one counselor for every 1,200 students because it’s based on the actual number of Chapman students eligible to use the counseling services. He said the ratio includes all undergraduate students, who are required to pay the counseling service fee, and approximately 300 graduate students, who chose to pay for these services.
Walker said the difference in the two ratios came down to how the numbers are interpreted.
Chris Im, Student Government Association president, said he wanted to improve Chapman’s services because it’s something that’s important to the entire student body.
“Mental health is something that we should be really focused on because it’s the biggest underrepresented identity that you will ever see,” Im said.
Although there have been improvements within the counseling center, Im said the service gets used up at a rapid pace.
“It gets utilized so often and so quickly that it’s really hard to see an improvement even though there has been,” Im said.
Walker said the outside review was complimentary of the work the counseling center has done, but said Chapman didn’t line up with other universities in terms of having a psychiatrist and its ability to do outreach programs, which would require additional staff.
What does the future hold?
Following the evaluation, Im, Price, former sophomore and student government senator Leon Lukic, who dropped out of Chapman to focus on his own mental health, and Chancellor Daniele Struppa met and discussed improvements they would like to see in the counseling services.
“Some of that was a psychiatrist, more counseling service hours, getting rid of that waitlist…and then also more training for faculty so they can refer students who need counseling services to the center,” Im said.
Price and Struppa agreed to implement two important changes—which Im hopes to see in action by next semester. The first issue is to maintain the student-tocounselor ratio, according to Im.
If the student population increases and surpasses the national average, the administration will hire another counselor or extend the center’s hours, Price said.
According to Price, the university has hired two fulltime counselors in the past five years. He said he has seen a general improvement in how mental health is handled on college campuses over the past 20 years due to advancements in the pharmaceuticals offered to students.
“As medications have improved, we’ve found more students who have the academic ability and are also able to manage college,” Price said. “That being said, it doesn’t mean they’re cured. It just means it’s more manageable, but they still have flare ups.”
One of the external consultant’s suggestions was to hire an on-campus psychiatrist, so this prompted Price and Struppa to begin the process of finding someone who would work well at Chapman.
“Our goal was to have someone come in for a few hours a week, but our goal and how much we had budgeted for that wasn’t panning out, so the consultant gave us a specific model that he recommended for us,” Price said.
Price told Struppa and student government that a proposal for the psychiatrist would be ready by the end of March. As of print, the proposal is in final review and will be submitted to Struppa this week.
Walker said she hopes to hire someone before the semester is over.
While the review led to positive changes to find a psychiatrist and reduce the waitlist, Price said there’s still uncertainty about what type of model suits Chapman’s campus.
“That review has prompted us to do an internal soul searching on what kind of model works the best,” Price said.
Im also hopes to increase the amount of outreach programs to spread awareness of mental health and Chapman’s services.
“We do very little communication on campus for the rest of the world who don’t really understand what we do,” Walker said. “That’s really distressing to me because I think that’s extremely important.”
Other universities of similar size have done up to 90 outreach programs in one academic year, whereas Chapman only did six, according to Walker.
“I make a big deal about getting more staff to be able to make that flow out to the campus community, rather than it just all coming in,” Walker said. According to Walker, additional staff would allow the counseling center to put on programs in the residence halls, spread awareness to on-campus organizations and train faculty on how to help and respond to students. With the proper resources, Walker said the center “can become the kind of counseling service that Chapman deserves; which is one that goes out and is able to do the programming and connect with staff to really have people understand what we do.”
Reporting by Ashley Probst and Gardner Royce.
Photo courtesy Pixabay.
