(WGHP) — There appears to be a crisis on American college campuses, and it’s going largely unnoticed by a majority of the public.
“This phenomenon’s not new,” Dean of Students at Elon University Jana Lynn Patterson said.
But the numbers are stark: nearly 40% of students say they’re suffering from depression, nearly 75% say they find school overwhelming and nearly 30% say they failed a class because of mental health issues.
Patterson says Elon has been at the forefront of doing something about the issue and feels they have a much better situation there or even at many colleges these days.
“I don’t think we’re at a crisis level because I think most colleges and universities are managing it well,” Patterson said about how it’s dealt with as a school-wide effort. “Promoting positive mental health is not the sole responsibility of the University Counseling Center. It’s a university-wide obligation and initiative … Twenty years ago, a student wouldn’t necessarily disclose a mental health condition to a faculty or staff member. Our students would do that quite regularly now because they trust their faculty members, and they want to engage with their faculty members around that.”
Faculty members at most schools have begun to have training as does the state, which wants to make mental health services as common on campuses as cafeterias.
“Behavioral health is just like physical health. It’s core to who we are as people,” North Carolina Secretary of Health and Human Services Kody Kinsley said.
This has been a problem that i generations in the making, including the way parents have raised their children over the last few decades.
“Because the world is a tougher place … As parents of the last couple of generations, we have tried to lessen the impact on our children,” Patterson said. “And that’s not a criticism other than a reality.”
Elon’s approach is to not let problems fester and to have resources available around the clock.
“It could be someone who works with them,” Patterson said. “We have a 24-hour kind of crisis line … If a student is studying for a test, and it’s 3:00 a.m., and they feel overwhelmed then they can engage with our vendor … We use a company called Timely Care. They can engage with someone at Timely Care who can help them in the moment so that then they can progress and finish up that paper or be in a better place to take that test the next day.”
See more on this story in this edition of The Buckley Report.
