Universities may talk a great line to parents and prospective students about the availability of wonderful mental health resources, but what they mostly mean is inspirational webinars about how to get along with your roommate, and easy prescriptions for Adderall or Xanax (or both!!) over at student health.
Frankly, given what we've seen, college suicide rates make MUCH more sense to me now. For all of the hand-wringing of administrators, and the appointment of more people to "examine" the problem, there is actually some erosion in on-the-ground support for students, as compared to a couple of decades back, from what I've seen.
They offer NOTHING in terms of talk-therapy in-house. They also aren't offering referrals-- more like a strong recommendation to "get professional help with that," and a list of local providers. The result is what I listed above.
Sorry if I sound a little bitter. The thing is, colleges and universities are GREAT at patting themselves on the back for all that they are doing for "student mental health intervention/prevention/awareness," but-- well, let's just say that they're doing just as great a job at this as they have sexual assault interventions over the past few decades.
I find the hypocrisy of it pretty galling.
