There are approximately 7,000 students enrolled at CSU Monterey Bay, with three and a half health service counselors available to them; an alarming ratio considering the demand for services has ticked up in the past year, and enrollment is expected to double in the near future.
At the same time, some students and professors have voiced their concern about prolonged waitlists to see counselors, lack of response from university administrators to thwart students’ aggressive outbursts and insufficient funding for student health services.
To look more closely into what needs to be improved for on-campus counseling services, university officials opted to do an external review of the the Personal Growth & Counseling Center (PGCC) on Nov. 4.
A report of that review is expected to be completed in two weeks, and will determine if more funding is needed to provide necessary services and hours. It also will provide a staff-size recommendation.
“Our counseling service is a high priority,” Ronnie Higgs, vice president of student affairs and enrollment services, writes in an email to the Weekly. “And our primary focus is to assist students in achieving their academic goals by focusing on health enhancing behavior and providing health education and student advocacy.”
During an Academic Senate Executive Committee meeting in April, Higgs suggested students front the cost of expanding counseling services. He mentioned an $11 increase to the current $65 student health care fee may be a feasible solution to the university’s budget gap.
There is no proposed student fee increase – yet. But that could change in two weeks when the external review recommendations are turned over to the administration, Higgs says.
The suggested increase would be a low-cost fee compared to other CSU campuses. For example, students at CSU Humboldt and San Diego State University pay $408 and $300, respectively, per semester for health services.
In a Nov. 5 cover story, the Weekly shed light on the issues of mental illness treatment on campus. Two years ago, students witnessed former student and U.S. Marine veteran Brian Ballasch have violent outbursts and threaten faculty members. While the administration was aware of his behavior, little was done to protect students and worried faculty, according to numerous sources.
Ballasch appeared to have suffered from post traumatic stress resulting from three tours in Iraq. Now, he is in custody facing trial on attempted murder for allegedly shooting a Mariposa County sheriff’s deputy in the face.
“I am still shocked something like that could have happened on our campus,” says Chris Carpenter, a CSUMB professor and board member of the CSUMB corporation.
Treatment for veterans is available through the PGCC, where non-veteran students are also served. Higgs says there is no Veterans Affairs counseling department, only VA services that guide veteran students on benefits and other non-health-related services.
In the past year, CSUMB has seen a 35-percent increase in veteran students, which is why the university wants to establish a Veterans Center that can fill those gaps and be “a one-stop-shop for services,” Higgs says.
(1) comment
I am a student at CSUMB and a person living with a mental illness. In the eight years since I was first diagnosed with a mental health disorder, I have attended four different colleges on my long, but now successful, path to a degree. Here is what I have learned about college mental health services:
University counseling centers are usually understaffed by underpaid counselors, leading to a poor quality of care, no matter how good the intentions of the University. In the fall of 2013, for instance, I tried to make an appointment for counseling at the PGCC, only to be told that no one could see me for four weeks - despite the fact that I was in crisis. I ended up being hospitalized at CHOMP instead.
University counseling centers are being asked to do too many things. The mental health needs of college students are as diverse as a college's student body, and not all mental health needs can or should be met by the university. While it makes sense for a university to support college students dealing with the normal struggles of adjustment to independent adult life, and with alcohol or drug dependency, as those problems are common to college students, it makes less sense for universities to try to assist students with more complex mental health needs, such as serious organic mental illness (major depression, bipolar disorder or schizophrenia, for instance). Trauma is also difficult to treat, but as colleges grapple both with epidemic sexual assault and with an influx of returning veterans, they will have no choice but to accomodate trauma survivors.
Nevertheless, universities make a poor venue for mental health care. In contrast with community mental health practitioners, mental health providers employed by the university are unable to fully protect the privacy of their patients, as confidentiality rules under FERPA (the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act) are different than those under HIPAA (the better-known Health Insurance Portability and Accountablilty Act), and universities, such as the University of Oregon, have been known to use college students' mental health records against them during law suits. Then too, college counselors have intrinsically divided loyalties, both to their university employer and to their patients. As a patient and a student, I have faced agonizing decisions about whether to be fully honest with a university counselor about my mental health, as I worried it would jeopardize my continuing enrollment.
Respectfully, I would suggest that mental health services for serious mental illness are best provided by experts not encumbered by conflicts of interest, but free to provide the best quality care available. That means mental health care provided in the community, perhaps subsidized by the university but not supervised by the university.
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