Is UHCS’ short-term therapy approach failing students in the throes of mental health crisis?

Northeastern University’s approach to addressing students’ mental health concerns has become a major point of contention in the on-going race for SGA Student Body President and Vice President, with one pair of candidates (Suchira Sharma and Paulina Ruiz) calling for a reformation on on-campus resources to better assist students with pressing and recurring mental health concerns and their opponents (Josh Bender and Alex Grondin) instead advocating for an expansion of the referral system that instead pushes students to take advantage of off-campus resources. It’s clear that there’s significant disagreement on how to broach this campus-wide issue.

The vast majority of universities attempt to address students’ mental health concerns through on-campus counseling resources and referral services.Northeastern, in accordance with most inner-city colleges of comparable size, employs a “short-term therapy” model, which limits students to seeing a therapist for six to ten visits, or up to a semester, then refers them off-campus. It’s far from the only university to do so, but with surging demand for services forcing appointments to be spaced out to a month apart, though, semesters often run out before ten sessions can even take place.

And yet, referring students to off-campus professionals is not an all-encompassing solution either. Putting the burden of seeking help on students, many of who enter college with no experience setting up appointments of any kinds, creates a new set of challenges for those students. Whereas on-campus counselors almost never charge students for services, seeing professionals off-campus often comes at a steep financial cost, particularly if a student’s insurance isn’t accepted. For those on a shoestring budget, the idea of paying a therapist – per session and out-of-pocket – is too absurd to entertain.

A project that examines the crux of this issue – namely, what the responsibility of a college should be in treating the mental health concerns of its students – would be especially timely given the SGA race. In gathering information for the piece, I would attempt to contact Robert Klein (executive director of UHCS) and those in similar positions of authority at Boston University  (Judy Platt, director of BHS; and Carrie Landa, head of behavioral medicine) and Tufts (Julie S. Ross, director of CMHS) to get a sense of where all these universities stand on the issue of college mental health counseling, and potentially hold video interviews with them.

Behind the SMILE, an on-campus group dedicated to erasing stigma around mental illness on Northeastern’s campus, would also be a useful resource to turn to for information.