Mental Illness Strains School Counselors

[DeepModem Mom]

NYT/AP: Mental Illness Strains School Counselors
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Published: April 20, 2007

NEW YORK (AP) -- Across America, college counseling centers are strained by rising numbers of mentally ill students and surging demand for mental health services -- a challenging trend as campus officials try to identify potential threats like the unstable Virginia Tech gunman.

And even when serious emotional problems are detected, university officials often feel constrained in how they respond due to an array of laws and policies protecting students' rights and privacy.

''The number of people coming to colleges who've had psychiatric treatment has increased tremendously,'' said Dr. Gerald Kay, a psychiatry professor at Wright State University and chair of the American Psychiatric Association committee on college mental health.

''Now they're able to come to college -- that would not have been the case earlier,'' Kay said. ''You've got a very large number of people who may have some vulnerabilities. It has stressed the availability of resources.''

Reasons for the surge include the Americans with Disabilities Act, which gives mentally ill students the right to be at college, and increasingly sophisticated medications which enable them to function better than in the past.

Recent surveys and studies underscore the scope of the increase.

A survey last year by the American College Health Association found that 8.5 percent of students had seriously considered suicide, and 15 percent were diagnosed for depression, up from 10 percent in 2000. The Anxiety Disorders Association of America found that 13 percent of students at major universities and 25 percent at liberal arts colleges are using campus mental health services....

http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/us/AP-Virginia-Tech-Mental-Health.html

[goddess40]

1. and that's where our school is making cuts

It's disheartening but because we have spending caps we have to make deep cuts. More important than the caps are the runaway price increases in three areas - health care, health insurance and fuel prices. These costs are killing our school, while they are making record profits the schools are cutting essential portions of their budgets.

[Monkeyman]

5. Look at 2008 Bush Budget for Education Cuts start there

[izzie]

2. It is sort of an interesting thing going on. I wonder if we did

not go to far in the other way when we shut so many hospitals for these people? These hospitals, in then self were not just right but hoping the ill will take their pills, if they do cure them, seems to not work either. I frank;ly do not think many families want the stain of some thing like this type illness on their health records. The sick seem to be in a catch 22 state along with parents and schools. :shrug:

[The2ndWheel]

3. More of this, more of that

Everything needs more. More money, more college kids, more mental illnesses, more mental treatments, more attention earlier in life, more money needed for more attention, more work needed for more money for more attention earlier in life, more privacy laws, more ways needed to find a way to work within those laws, more pressure on the kids to figure out what they want to do with their lives earlier in life, more money needed to do the things those kids want to do, more pressure on the parents to make more money and spend more time with their kids who are busy doing more things so that when they apply to college they have enough to show that they're capable of handling more responsibility, more pressure to live a better life than their parents, more, more, more.

[DollyM]

4. I have a seriously difficult time believing . . .

that colleges are in in such financial distress that they can't hire more counselors. Let's seem maybe if you didn't pay your coach a million dollars a year, that wouldn't be a problem . . .
My husband works at a technical college, makes a great salary and they don't have a sports program and overpaid coaches. He workes at a community college before and when it was a choice between putting him on full time as a counselor and putting on a coach full time, guess who got to be full time? It wasn't the counselor. The problem is not lack of money in the college system (or high school for that matter) it is that their priorities are screwed up.

[goddess40]

6. I know our schools are seriously strapped for money

we have a spending cap set at 2.8% so just health care, health insurance and ever rising fuel costs eat that up plus a good chunk of the budget so cuts have to be made every year. Plus all the ridiculous testing mandated but not funded by the federal government and that puts us in the hole before school maintenance or salary even get on the table. They set the caps 15 years ago and they have slowly strangled our educational system.

If government doesn't step in and save us from these monopolies, there may be separate providers but they set prices together, our schools will have to close their doors.