College Mental Health Crisis Challenged

Statistics have shown that the amount of students seeking mental health services on college campuses continues to increase at high rates. That, combined with high profile events like the shooting at Virgina Tech have put college counseling centers in the spotlight. As route to get greater funding (many centers are dramatically underfunded), some schools have been calling the current situation a "crisis." One former professor was not happy with this term and wrote an interesting editorial to the LA Times about it. My thoughts are that the severity of pathology presented at these centers has increased simply because people struggling with more severe problems have found treatments to help them succeed higher academic levels than in the past. Due to this and increasing enrollment, there is certainly a need for greater funding and more staff positions at most schools. For college students with generalized anxiety disorder, these increases would mean greater access to treatment, shorter waiting lists, and possibly more treatment alternatives. For more on college students and GAD click here.