Apr. 12--A steady line of students cued up for a free mental health screening in the Fairfield University student center late last month. After they completed the survey, free 5-minute massages were being offered.
"It was awesome," said Julie Labbadia, 19, a freshman from Westbrook, rising from the chair and preparing to head off to class.
A double major in English and sociology, Labbadia said her biggest issue these days is time management. She added she would have no problem at all seeking help at the campus counseling center.
"I think talking it out with someone, when you're stressed out, helps so much," said
Labbadia.
That, apparently, was the attitude of as many as 20 percent of Fairfield U.'s 3,300 full-time undergraduates, who paid a visit to the university's Counseling & Psychological Service Center last year.
At Fairfield, like other campuses around the nation, business at counseling centers has never been higher. A 2009 national survey conducted by the Center for the Study of Collegiate Mental Health, found some 71 percent of counseling center directors on 66 college campuses across the nation say they believe the number of students with severe psychological problems is up.
Beyond anxiety and homesickness, students are increasingly showing symptoms of clinical depression. They get overwhelmed by schoolwork, finances and their future. Nearly half of 28,000 students polled on the CSCMH study say they have felt overwhelming anxiety at least once in the past year. Nearly 30 percent felt so depressed it was hard to function and 6 percent seriously considered suicide.
Several highly publicized suicides this year at Cornell University in Ithaca, N.Y., and one last month in New York City by a 21-year-old junior from Yale University, seem to punctuate the concern that a growing number of college students have more serious psychiatric disorders.
Yes and no, said Dr. Harold Koplewicz, president of the Child Study Center Foundation in New York. While it is true there are more college students in need of counseling services, Koplewicz said it's because more students with diagnosed psychiatric disorders are going to college. In the past, those students either wouldn't have gone to college or would have left shortly after they arrived. Now, with treatment and medication, those students see college as an entitlement. They head off to college, diagnosis and prescription bottles in hand.
As such, Koplewicz said students making college choices this month should factor in the quality of the mental health services at the schools they are considering.
At Fairfield University, students have to trek up to Dolan Hall on the north end of campus for the counseling center, where the aroma of fresh-brewed coffee permeates the softly lit hallways. The center, accredited by the International Association of Counseling Center Services, has four full-time counselors, three part-time counselors and a substance-abuse counselor and graduate student interns.
"The typical standard is one counselor to 1,200 students. We are one to 800," said Susan Birge, assistant vice president and director of counseling and psychological services at Fairfield. The center pays for some of its staff with grants.
The staffing level allows the center to do outreach and preventative programs as well as offer regular clinic office hours.
The screening survey conducted at the student center is done twice a year. That usually brings in a flood of students who either fill out the survey, or notice the booth and decide to give it a try.
Sarah Gatti's first encounter with the Fairfield counseling center was as a freshmen when a friend was having a lot of issues. "She was like, 'I'm not crazy,' and I said 'No,' so we came up together. It was the best gift ever. I so needed this," said Gatti, now 22, and about to graduate with a major in religious studies and a minor in peace and justice.
Gatti grew up in a close-knit family in Peabody, Mass. She found it overwhelming to listen to classmates who seemed to know who they were and where they were going. Counseling gave her the opportunity to figure out who she was outside her family context. She has used the counseling center off and on for four years.
"Your brain is too serious to not check out. If my elbow was hurting, I would have checked it out," said Gatti, pointing to the chair in counselor Robert Whething's office that she uses when she comes in.
The first two years she didn't tell anyone about her hourlong visits to the counseling center. Now she talks freely about the experience. "It takes courage to acknowledge there are things you need to unpack. We have resources here. And they're free," she said.
Glenn Ghirardi, 22, a senior at Fairfield from Redding, Mass., discovered the counseling center as a freshman after getting into trouble during a night of drinking. He was sent to the center to talk to a substance-abuse counselor. He talked to grief counselor Elise Harrison by mistake. Ghirardi, whose father had died when he was 14, started visiting the center to talk and later joined a grief support group. At first he didn't make it known to his friends.
"Being a male there is still that stigma. Now, I am comfortable enough with myself I can talk about it to other people," said Ghirardi. He is also the unofficial recruiter for the grief group, which meets every Wednesday on campus.
Fairfield also has a bipolar group, a "coming out/being out" group, a group for adult children of alcoholics and various groups for those who have substance abuse issues. Ghirardi said the grief group gives him an outlet to discuss grief-related issues with people who understand.
"It's an elastic thing. It doesn't stay the same. Things can be going good, then something will make it fresh again like an anniversary or a birthday or a milestone. Graduation is coming up. My dad is not going to be at graduation," said Ghirardi of the events that can pose a challenge.
"Students today have way more complex issues than say, when I was in college," said Mary Jo Mason, director of counseling and assistant dean of students for wellness at Sacred Heart University in Fairfield.
At Sacred Heart, Mason said anxiety is the top issue facing students. Eight years ago, it was depression. This year to date, the SHU counseling center has seen 515 students, compared to 410 students over the same period last year. There are 3,500 full-time undergraduates on campus.
Sacred Heart has two full-time counselors, one full-time drug and alcohol counselor, a part-time counselor and several graduate student interns. Another full-time counselor is on medical leave. To compensate, the center is offering 30-minute counseling sessions instead of 45 minutes and encourages students to see them every other week. The university uses peer counselors to run programs in residence halls on how to manage stress and anxiety. "So far, knock on wood, we've avoided a waiting list," said Mason.
There used to be a rhythm to counseling center demand. Caseloads would begin to fill the first of October when freshmen homesickness kicked in. "This year, we were full sometime in the middle of September," said Mason.
Other peak times are whenever students return from a break -- home life appears not to agree with some students -- along with mid-term and finals week.
Mason described college counseling sessions today as much more prescriptive. Instead of pondering the meaning of life, it's about getting students to look rationally at their thinking processes and behaviors to change their frame of mind.
One thing that hasn't changed is Mason's advice to relieving stress and anxiety: Get enough sleep, food and exercise.
At Yale, the Mental Health and Counseling Department sees between 17 and 20 percent of the student body each year, a caseload that's 10 percent higher than a decade ago, according to Dr. Lorraine Siggins, chief psychiatrist for Yale University Health Service. Siggins thinks it's because there is less stigma among students to seeking mental health services.
Yale has a staff of 20 psychiatrists, clinical psychologists and clinical social workers available around the clock. There are office hours for appointments or walk-ins. Students come to the center with concerns about depression, anxiety, panic attacks, obsessional issues, concerns about illness or death in the family, identity issues and substance-abuse issues.
At times of crisis, such as with the recent suicide in New York or the murder last fall of a Yale graduate student, the center is staffed through 11 p.m. and counselors will meet with students in the university's residential colleges.
According to Siggins, the suicide rate for college students in the U.S. is lower than that of the population at large for people the same age. Koplewicz said every year the number of young people who commit suicide, or try to, has remained fairly constant. Having comprehensive mental health screening programs is probably not going to stop that. Because suicides are often acts of impulse and because one suicide tends to put the idea into someone else's head, it's important to heighten awareness, said Birge.
In any crisis situation -- such as the death of a student -- Fairfield U. will send an
e-mail blast to staff and make sure everyone knows how to get help for themselves or someone else. Everyone on campus, she said, has to get into the act of picking up the phone when help is needed.
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