Mia Matthews began using Syracuse University’s counseling services in April to see a therapist weekly. Therapy helped her find a balance between her mental health and academic responsibilities.

But her therapist recently told her that she was leaving SU. Matthews isn’t sure if she’ll be able to see a new therapist on a regular basis for future appointments.

“For someone like me, who personally deals with childhood trauma and depression, I don’t feel like explaining my situation to a new person every time I go (to therapy),” said Matthews, a sophomore studying citizenship and civic engagement and writing and rhetoric.

Matthews and other SU students said in interviews with The Daily Orange that the university’s counseling services aren’t adequately meeting their mental health needs.

During the summer, SU relocated its counseling services from Walnut Place to the Barnes Center at The Arch. The move was intended to better connect different aspects of students’ mental and physical health. The focus of the university’s counseling services remains the same.

The Counseling Center implemented a drop-in model last semester allowing students in need of short-term care to meet with a therapist without an appointment. Students told The D.O. that this system, still in place at The Arch, can make it difficult for students interested in long-term individual counseling to schedule regular appointments. 

Mia Matthews said she doesn’t want to explain her situation to a new therapist every time she goes to therapy. TJ Shaw | Staff Photographer

Matthews is searching for a therapist in Syracuse she can see regularly, but she would have to pay for these off-campus appointments herself. SU’s counseling services are covered by a $375 health and wellness fee that full-time students are required to pay each semester.

Between 2,500 and 3,500 SU students seek counseling during each academic year, said Cory Wallack, SU’s interim executive director of health and wellness and the former director of the Counseling Center. The drop-in system and counseling services’ extended hours of operation were implemented to improve access to services.

Wallack said SU has never truly offered “long-term” counseling services to students. The university’s counseling services are meant to provide temporary care, though the length of care can be somewhat extended if the student demonstrates a need for additional counseling. This structure of care aims to make counseling available to a greater variety of students, he said.

“We’ve never marketed ourselves or really provided long-term therapy in the sense of we’re going to meet with you weekly for the next two or three years, in part, because doing so really limits the opportunity for other students to have access to that service,” Wallack said.

Over the past two years, SU has expanded its number of full-time counseling staff and added a training program where graduate students seeking degrees in counseling can work with students, he said.

“In terms of a staff-to-student ratio, we’re super competitive with any of our peer schools,” Wallack said. “We’re well above the national average of how many staff we have per student on campus.”

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Colleges across the country are struggling to meet the growing demand for student counseling services, said Nance Roy, who is the chief clinical officer at The Jed Foundation, a nonprofit that partners with educational institutions to strengthen the mental health resources available to students.

For the past several years, more incoming college students have arrived on campus with diagnosed mental illnesses, Roy said. Anxiety and depression are the two most prominent mental illnesses among these students. A 2018 report of collegiate mental health from the Pennsylvania State University found that over 60% of students who visited their campus counseling centers said they were experiencing anxiety. Almost 50% said they were depressed.

Roy said the stigma surrounding mental health issues has weakened, which has encouraged more students to seek help for their mental health. Students’ growing desire to turn to professional help has led counseling centers across the country to become swamped with students seeking appointments, she said.

“It’s good that students feel comfortable accessing care,” Roy said. “But for most schools, they’re not able to offer long-term psychotherapy.”

Lydia Engel, a sophomore music major, utilized the drop-in counseling system a few weeks ago to help her work through her grief after the death of someone close to her. She found it was helpful to get some of her emotions off her chest but was left feeling lost about what steps she could take next to continue to receive counseling services.

“I felt like I was in and out,” she said. “I was like ‘Okay, what now?’ The thing with the walk-in is that you can go whenever you want, but you can’t always get the same person. I didn’t necessarily feel like all of it was personal enough.”

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When Leondra Tyler went to the Counseling Center’s previous location last semester to set up an appointment, she was told she could only use the center for crisis or emergency mental health care. But Tyler, a second-year freshman psychology major, doesn’t understand why she should pay to see a therapist in the city when she’s a student at SU.

Part-time students, like Tyler, are excluded from receiving long-term individual counseling because they don’t pay the university’s health and wellness fee each semester.

“At the time, I wasn’t really doing too well, so counseling for me was important,” she said. “And the most debilitating thing was to get shut down, like ‘we can’t help you because you don’t have what we require to pay for this.’”

Part-time students are still able to participate in group therapy at The Arch and utilize the center’s drop-in counseling services, Wallack said.

Leondra Tyler said she doesn’t understand why she should should pay to see a Syracuse therapist as an SU student. TJ Shaw | Staff Photographer

Colleges need to take a multidisciplinary approach to more effectively address students’ counseling needs, incorporating other aspects of students’ overall health outside of direct clinical services, Roy said. Not every student needs long-term counseling, and some may benefit equally from having someone they trust to turn to when they’re struggling, she said.

Students’ mental health needs can also be partially managed by living a healthy lifestyle, Roy said. Students can take steps to improve their overall well-being by exercising, eating a balanced diet and getting enough sleep, which will contribute to a healthier state of mind.

With SU’s health and counseling services now under one roof, Wallack aims to promote a model of whole-body health that looks at students’ overall health when determining their mental health needs, he said. He encourages students seeking regular counseling sessions to consider group therapy, which allows students to build a support network with other students struggling with similar mental health issues.

SU’s solution to the national increase in student mental health needs remains frustrating to students seeking regular, free counseling services.

“It’s really important to give every student the opportunity to see counseling services and not have to put a price on that,” Tyler said. “With all the money we put into tuition, we should have access to counseling. No matter what type of student you are, the access should just be there.”

Published on October 9, 2019 at 10:23 pm

Contact Gillian: gifollet@syr.edu