Mental Health on Campuses also Require More Attention
The problem of college students with mental health issues is not new, but the ramifications of this oftentimes hidden issue is becoming more and more acute for those of us who work on campuses. And while there hasn’t been a major violent situation lately – such as the 2007 Virginia Tech massacre – we all sense that mental health issues represent a ticking bomb at the nation’s colleges and universities.
The National Council on Disability (NCD), an independent federal agency headquartered in Washington, D.C., has just released a report titled “Mental Health on College Campuses: Investments, Accommodations Needed to Address Student Needs.” The report constitutes an immediate call to action.
This report does not reveal anything new. Its premises are well known.
The percentage of college students seeking support for mental health issues at all levels is increasing, and that most campuses are not responding appropriately to their needs. This lack of resources impacts students’ ability to succeed in college. Students with problems such as stress, substance abuse, eating disorders, and suicidal ideation “continue to face barriers to accessing counseling services on campus and in receiving disability-related accommodations that are necessary to help them participate in their education on an equal footing with students without disabilities,” according to the report, which calls for major reforms in both institutional policies and practices, and in federal laws and policies.
The NCD report is based on research conducted by interviewing numerous social science researchers, advocates, college administrators, college policymakers, college legal counsels, disability specialists and mental health service providers. It lays out a series of recommendations to Congress, the U.S. Department of Education, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, as well as directly to institutions of higher education. More faculty, staff, and administrators, according to the report, need training in identifying and supporting students with mental health issues, while making sure that colleges provide disability-related modifications and accommodations as required under federal disability laws. Lack of resources for students seems to be particularly acute in the case of community colleges in rural areas, the study found.
The recommendations made by the NCD include, but are not limited to, asking Congress to provide more funding for mental health and substance abuse disorder services on campuses, money to assist colleges in meeting the increased need for mental health services and support for students, as well as increasing funding for suicide prevention programs. The NCD calls for the government to provide this funding assistance “contingent on those colleges implementing a mental health program, just as federal law makes federal financial assistance available contingent on a college’s implementation of a program to prevent student use/abuse of illicit drugs and alcohol.”
The report also recommends Congress substantially increase Pell Grants to provide opportunities to students with disabilities who are disproportionately low-income, to amend the Higher Education Act to extend the length of time a student with a disability is eligible for federal financial aid and to allow students whose disabilities cause them to require additional semesters of financial aid to retain their eligibility for Pell Grants beyond 12 semesters.
Among the recommendations to the U.S. Department of Education are to provide colleges with best practices for responding to students who exhibit or threaten self-harming behavior, to provide colleges with best practices for offering legally required modifications and accommodations for students with mental health disabilities, to modify the Free Application for Federal Student Aid (FAFSA) to allow students to directly input disability-related expenses, and to clarify to colleges that student support services funding can be used to provide mental health counseling services.
The NCD also recommends the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services to take actions to increase the awareness at colleges about mental health grant funding opportunities, including funds available under the 21st Century Cures Act, a law passed by Congress in 2016 that authorized over $6 billion in health-related funding.
These and many other recommendations in the report are timely and sound, but will they be heard? Most likely not. With a Congress, an administration, and the media fully distracted in ideological battles about healthcare, Russia-related news, and budgetary issues, the NCD report will most likely be ignored until the next Virginia Tech type of incident – a tragedy that resulted in the killing of 32 people and the wounding of 17 others.
Then we’ll see policy makers rushing to make grandiose statements while not mentioning that the responsibility of preventing these kinds of tragedies was theirs in the first place. The same can be said of federal agencies which lack the nerve to implement the law or to come up with actions that require vision, particularly because many of them have vacant positions yet to be filled caused by the lack of action by the current administration.
Lastly, but equally important, we need better leadership at the college level that shows a genuine interest in dealing with this issue by seeking external funding and redirecting internal funding to provide the necessary services to students dealing with mental health issues. Many administrators at colleges and universities are focused on solving budgetary issues caused by diminishing financial support from their states, or are distracted trying to make their boards of trustees happy by increasing the prominence of their institutions in meaningless and unscientific rankings. Sadly, do not expect U.S. News and World Report or others to publish rankings about “Colleges that do Best in Addressing Mental Health Issues” anytime soon.
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Mental Health on Campuses also Require More Attention