Opinion
Students’ mental health lacks institutional support
By Evelyn Torsher ’17
March 6, 2015
This year, I have struggled profoundly for the first time in my life with anxiety and depression. It has been a frightening and difficult experience, but I feel blessed to be in this place and surrounded by people who go out of their way to understand and support me. I am glad that I have friends who know when to listen, what to say and where to send me, parents that are always available to talk and offer advice over the phone and faculty members in whom I can confide and depend.
Had I not had such a strong support system of non-professionals, finding the resources I needed would have been even more difficult. The student body at Hamilton has made leaps and bounds in talking about mental health issues since I arrived on campus last fall, taking a head-on approach by hosting the speak-out event, participating in peer networks and encouraging openness about issues like mine. I am glad that I can share my mental health issues with my peers without feeling weak or marginalized. I cannot imagine a group of people with whom I would rather undergo this awful experience. However, I am disappointed by the inaccessibility of professional mental healthcare at Hamilton.
Here at Hamilton, the Career and Life Outcomes Center employs almost twice as many professional counselors as the Counseling Center. This strikes me as a painful symptom of our institution’s disordered priorities. If there was to be less intensive pressure on us as students to procure jobs and succeed academically, perhaps there would be less demand for counselors; as it stands, the current system perpetuates a cycle of mental illness by failing to provide adequate support for the anxiety and stress it creates.
I am not saying that Hamilton should hire fewer Career Center advisors or adjust its academic environment to accommodate stressed out students or produce less academic pressure, nor am I suggesting that the counselors at the Counseling Center are not doing the best they can. The Counseling Center, with only four trained counselors, manages to see patients every single day and maintain a counselor-on-call service during its off hours. Still, it is difficult to get an appointment at the Counseling Center fewer than ten days in advance, sometimes even longer during high-stress exam periods. Students are discouraged from returning to the counseling center more frequently than once a week unless they are seen as a danger to themselves. We deserve better and we can do better. I believe that in order to make a meaningful impact on the state of mental well-being on this campus, the administration needs to answer the call for more professional counselors and trained staff to help students.
So to my fellow students, thank you for all your recent work to start the conversation about mental health. You have helped me and many others to find strength. To the counselors and staff at the Counseling Center, thank you for all you do to make yourselves available to us. To the administration, I ask you to please make this valuable resource more accessible. We are working hard to raise awareness and positivity about mental health, but our efforts are inconsequential if you do not provide us with ample resources to easily get the help we need when we need it.