Why is it taking students four weeks to schedule an appointment for mental health help? Why isn’t the administration more concerned that student mental health emergencies have gone up 171% in the last year?
Sure, there hasn’t been a suicide on DePauw’s campus in five years, but do we have to wait for another one to happen for our administration to act?
According to Healthline.com, one in four college students have some form of mental illness. This is due in part to the college lifestyle: lack of sleep, poor eating habits, even worse drinking/drug habits, financial pressures, the pressures of getting good grades, finding jobs and internships, the list goes on. You know just as well as we do that DePauw stress is even more real, as we discussed in the Editorial titled “The Value of DePauw Stress” on March 10.
Although this stress is usually good and needed for things to get done, it still takes a toll on students’ mental health, especially when the stress piles up, as if often does.
We, the Editorial Board at The DePauw, see mental health as one of the most important issues for our school to take a stance on. We cannot sit back and wait for something to happen. We do not want our school to be another victim of a school shooting in the news because our mental health services were not adequate enough.
Furthermore, the online scheduling tool has made it nearly impossible to schedule an appointment when students actually need them. While it is certainly more convenient than calling the Wellness Center on the phone, slots are often times filled for weeks, making emergency visits even more stressful than they already are, as students never know if they will be able to see a doctor when they need to.
The fact that the university doesn’t see this as an issue is an issue in of itself. When students are in crisis, they shouldn’t have to wait nearly a month to get the help that they should be getting immediately. DePauw needs to be working toward a solution for this.
If we don’t provide students with the help they need to succeed in this environment, how are we going to react when we have more cases of self-harm and suicide on our hands? The administration should think about that the next time they say they are “adequately staffed” to handle the mental health needs of DePauw students.