Recently, the University Counseling Center (UCC) hired three more counselors, but despite the staffing additions, BU still does not offer adequate mental health services to students.
The Editorial Board commends the additions of counselors with experience in the multicultural and LGBTQ communities, especially since they are said to harbor diverse perspectives, but the ratio of students to counselors is still skewed. Though Johann Fiore-Conte, the assistant vice president for health and wellness, wrote in an email that the UCC “strive[s] to maintain an appropriate client to staff ratio,” each counselor still oversees over 1,000 students. With the student population on pace to quickly expand to 20,000 in the next few years, we hope this is only the beginning and that the University will hire more counselors to accommodate the growing need. Even now, the need exceeds the UCC’s capacity, as all new patients are currently being added to a waitlist.
Two of the three counselor positions are being funded by the student health fee and the other position is financed through athletics. It is unclear why some of the funding comes from the athletics department, which seems entirely unrelated to mental health. This only serves to add to the mystery surrounding BU’s mental health services, and why the counselor-to-student ratio has not been further improved.
The UCC focuses on “brief” or short-term care, which works for some patients, but students with ongoing mental health issues may require long-term care. When the brief therapy model was introduced in 2016, students became limited in how long they could see a counselor, and currently, students are usually only able to see a counselor once every two weeks. Some students were told they could only receive counseling services for three semesters under the brief therapy model. If they exceed these limits, they are referred off campus, which presents its own set of problems. Students can be matched with off-campus providers, but their options are limited. Community providers often can’t do anything if a student doesn’t have health insurance or if the provider they have been referred to doesn’t take their insurance. Many students cannot afford to pay out of pocket for their own mental health care, and it can be difficult for students with mental health issues to make the switch to an off-campus provider. Due to the lack of counselors in the Binghamton area, many students find it hard to get appointments or cannot afford the time and cost of transportation to other areas.
Fiore-Conte referenced other resources for students to find mental health care outside of the UCC, including Residential Life, Services for Students with Disabilities (SSD) and Decker Student Health Services Center. However, Residential Life’s main purpose is student housing and living, not mental health, and SSD focuses on accommodations for students with disabilities and mental illnesses, rather than diagnoses, and thus students must get documentation before they can receive such services. Decker’s psychiatric center is also difficult to navigate, so much so that callers must wait two business days for a return call to schedule an appointment and often play phone-tag to get someone on the phone. In addition, psychiatric care is a supplement to counseling, not a replacement, as Decker’s own website explains.
Other new initiatives mentioned by Fiore-Conte, who called them “equally important” to the new UCC staff members, include relaunching “new, more user friendly websites,” “increasing bystander programming on campus” and expanding “mindfulness training for students.” Though these initiatives may be important, they are not of the same caliber of utility as adding trained professionals to work directly with students with mental illnesses. He also appeared to correlate students’ unhealthy habits, such as not getting enough sleep and consuming too much caffeine, with their mental illness, and mentioned social media as contributing to depression and other mental stress. This only perpetuates the myth that the choices people make can directly cause or cure their mental health issues, and illustrates that the University doesn’t fully understand the importance of mental health or prioritize it on campus.
The staffing additions were driven almost entirely by University President Harvey Stenger’s safety initiative following the two student murders that occurred last spring. Despite the large quantity of student suicides — at least one per semester, it seems — changes to mental health care on campus are clearly not regarded with the same level of urgency. It seems that the suicide rate should have been impetus enough for increased counselors. Cameras might be important to solving and deterring crimes, but counseling is proven to help mental health. Mental health issues are also safety issues.
BU needs to make its students’ mental health a priority. Mental health issues should be brought to the forefront, not swept under the rug or hidden away in the second floor of Old O’Connor Hall. The recent developments are a start, but BU still needs to dedicate time and funds to the improvement of campus mental health resources.