In the minds of many Americans, college students are having the time of their lives. So why is Congress beginning to channel money to psychological counseling on college campuses?
Colleges across the country say more students–and more troubled ones–are seeking help. Student surveys show rising reports of depression and other psychological problems. Some high-profile campus suicides, and related lawsuits, have caught academia’s attention.
Counselors suggest that psychiatric medications are allowing students who once might not have attempted college to do so, bringing potentially serious psychological problems with them.
But psychologists also point to external forces–rising pressure for students to succeed as college becomes more competitive and expensive, an era of uncertainty, and the increasingly common challenge of balancing school, work and family responsibilities.
“There are a lot of good experiences that come out of the college years, but we are understanding that there are a lot of [stresses], as well,” said Jaquelyn Liss Resnick, head of the University of Florida’s counseling center and the nationwide Association of University and College Counseling Center Directors.
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Nearly one in 10 students say they have seriously considered killing themselves, according to the American College Health Association’s 2004 survey of more than 47,000 students. Every year, about 1,100 students nationwide end their lives, researchers say.
Still, suicide is less common among college students than among their peers who aren’t in higher education, according to a University of Chicago psychiatrist’s 1997 research project. In part, student suicides reverberate because each is a seemingly counterintuitive end to a story of promise and anticipation.
Garrett Smith’s was. He was an Eagle Scout, an active Mormon and a son of a U.S. senator, Gordon Smith of Oregon. He killed himself during his second semester in college.
“That Garrett eluded me haunts me every day,” his father told fellow senators the following spring, in March 2004.
Smith persuaded legislators to make money available to improve college mental-health services, among other suicide-prevention efforts.
The law, which President Bush signed in October, is thought to mark the first time Congress has set aside money specifically for campus psychological programs.