The 149-page study presents data from 51 North American colleges and universities about their mental health services. The benchmarking study helps its readers to answer questions such as: what are overall budgets for college mental health services and are they rising or falling? How long are therapeutic sessions and what limits do services place on their number and duration? What are manpower requirements and how are they met? What percentage of students seeking help are using psychiatric medications? What percentage are referred to outside services? How effective are triage techniques in dealing with a surge in students seeking help? What are the most commonly perceived mental health problems? How significant a problem are bipolar disorders, drug and alcohol abuse, eating disorders, and sexual abuse, among other problems and conditions?
The report details the many ways that college mental health services are coping with an influx of students, how they are marketing their services and monitoring students in trouble. The report also looks at collaborations with other colleges, grant and fundraising support, preventative mental health measures and more.
Just a few of the report’s many findings are that:
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Community college mental health budgets fell over the three-year period as did those for 4-year colleges while the budgets of more research-intensive institutions rose.
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Nearly 57% of colleges sampled use interns or part or full time professional help from graduate students in programs in psychology, psychiatry, counseling or related degrees. Research universities were the most likely to use such personnel, but colleges of all types used them.
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For private colleges, only 9.23% of counseling sessions lasted less than 45 minutes; 24.36% for public colleges.
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The study suggests a difficult mental health situation in the Nation’s community colleges which report much higher levels of mental health problems than do other types of colleges.
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Public colleges in the sample had a mean of 4.63 counselors; private colleges, 1.64.