Mental health is a pertinent issue at Wesleyan. Students here must negotiate an intense social-academic environment, while concurrently many are grappling with crucial questions of identity, politics, and personal history. One sixth to one fifth of the student body (500+ students) feel compelled to seek personal counseling with the Office of Behavioral Health (OBH) each year.
However, over the summer the Administration has chosen to cut these services by half; students will now only be able to schedule five (down from 10), sessions with OBH per nine-month school year.
These changes represent a unique response to an “objective” problem; the overwhelming, and often backlogged demand for OBH services. The Administration claims that since the majority of students schedule less than 5 visits, “capping” a limit of 5 would reduce waiting times for students. Yet, no one knows why most students stop coming before five visits. It could be because that is the number of sessions they required; on the other hand—as is my experience—students may discontinue OBH counseling because the quality of care from OBH’s (hardworking but) overwhelmed staff is unsatisfactory. Therefore, it seems very likely that the need for longer-term care is significantly underestimated—and this only from the demographic of students who have bothered to seek care at all.
How ironic that under the rubric of “improving access and services,” those brilliant students who most need longer short-term or long-term counseling are placed on their own to transport themselves to (OBH’s director estimates a three hour trip, on average) and pay for (although it’s claimed that “exceptions will be made”) appointments outside of Middletown. Furthermore “outsourcing” will disrupt one of the most important facets of medical care: continuity. Changing psychotherapists or doctors is not like switching banks; services provided by mental health professionals are rooted in personal relationships built upon case history. Upon referral, (assuming a compatible match) this relationship must begin again at square one.
The Administration’s response is, in effect, giving more people access to less services; why not an alternative approach, in which more people would have access to more services? In recruiting new students and in Administrative discourse generally, Wesleyan emphasizes competition with peer schools; its teaching, its buildings, are “better than the rest.”
Take three: Williams, Amherst, and Trinity College. Amherst, Wesleyan, and Williams are known as the “Little Three” colleges; this fraternal designation marks each college in the triad as a critical reference point for the other two. Trinity is nearby and comparable to the Little Three in its “competitiveness,” size and cost. A comparative investigation reveals two striking facts; first, none of these three schools places a limit upon the number of weekly counseling sessions a student can seek. That is, Wesleyan’s peers offer both short and long-term counseling—at no charge—to their students. Second, these institutions employ significantly more counseling staff to attend their smaller student bodies. It is important to stress that a comparative analysis of mental health services is important in two respects; (1) because it shows that competitive peer schools allocate significantly more resources to provide for the well-being of their students, and (2) that these increased allocations perhaps reveal a different, more compassionate institutional attitude towards the health of students.
Administrative officials may claim that “there is no budget” for such a thing. Such a claim is fictio—corporate Capitalism creates scarcity. With a $150 million dollar annual operating budget, what Wesleyan faces is not a “crisis of resources” but a crisis of priorities. I refuse to believe that Wesleyan does not have the estimated $50,000 per year to hire another psychotherapist(s); this amount reflects three-hundreths of one percent (.03%) of Wesleyan’s budget.
I believe that Wesleyan can do better. I agree with Wesleyan’s Administration that the demand for counseling services outstrips OBH’s current capacity; I also agree that when talking about healthcare, it is silly to bicker over numbers—“5 or 10.” However, I believe the “radical” notion that the best way to ensure mental health for students is to provide care, and that we could stop talking about numbers if Wesleyan joined its peers in offering as many counseling sessions as are required for students’ health. I believe that this institution has a responsibility to provide care for its students, because this environment creates intense stresses and challenges, and because Wesleyan claims to not be a business, but a caring community. Certainly, other staff and students can play a part in making a healthy environment on campus, but in the end, they are not professional medical staff.
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