If you read Medill junior Sam Kirkland’s letter to the editor last Thursday, you might have been left with a sense of listlessness regarding University Counseling and Psychological Services. The national news this year is full of reports of suicides on college campuses and stories expounding on the trends in collegiate depression and death. Six at Cornell, one at Yale and recently one on our own campus.
But beyond the extreme examples, the worst case scenarios of what happens when depression escalates to the desire to inflict harm on oneself are the struggles of everyday sadness, stress and anxiety, all of which are common themes in university life. As ubiquitous as the ever-condemned binge drinking, chronic conditions of anxiety and depression are a more commonplace and more subversive force on college campuses, and are often not paid as much lip service. While alcohol is more tied to campus culture, the amount of students likely to self-identify as borderline alcoholics is paltry compared to the number of students who consider themselves over-stressed, on edge or depressed.
The lack of desire to do much, the consistent stuck-in-the-rut feeling that most students deal with at one point or another but which for some is the rule rather than the exception, can be a harsh contrast to what are supposed to be “the best four years” of your life.
These omnipresent anxiety issues are a tough fit with the CAPS 12-session model.
I can call CAPS tomorrow. Maybe I’ll get a phone triage appointment and be scheduled for more counseling. Or I might get referred to an Evanston provider, depending on whether or not CAPS has a wait list.
Bottom line: If I walk into CAPS, I want CAPS to help me, not prescribe a preordained 12-session model or refer me to Evanston providers I could have used Google to find. The rigidity of the 12-sessions puts you on a track to either feel better by the end of the quarter or seek outside help.
I don’t doubt the intentions of CAPS in providing what they obviously view as an adequate range of services. CAPS is not a failure by any measure, but a 10 to 12 percent utilization rate, while comparable with peer schools like Cornell (at 15 percent) is not something the University’s psychological services should emphasize in its outreach lexicon. Instead of focusing on the number of individual students who seek help, why not reinvent the wheel a little bit and work on interacting with students in a less clinical setting? In an interview with The Daily, CAPS Executive Director John Dunkle discussed the popularity of CAPS’ stress clinics, which he said have doubled in the past year. They plan to expand the program when they move back into Searle next fall.
Group therapy is another option where CAPS can look to expand their range of services. Currently CAPS offers four to five groups at one time, each with six to eight students. Once they have begun there is no getting into them. The University is funding a new position at CAPS for a drug and alcohol specialist, certainly not a condemnable move, but not the best use of funds to expand the scope of CAPS’ services.
Students are reluctant to use CAPS. Many don’t even know what it offers. It is an entity removed from the everyday life of the University student, a last resort for the most dire cases. CAPS should be the first line of defense for students concerned about their mental wellness.
University funds should be directed at increasing the number of professionals to ensure that Northwestern students never have to wait for counseling.
Co-deputy Campus Editor Lauren Kelleher is a Medill Junior. She can be reached at [email protected]
