Synopsis:

This essay discusses the importance of therapy, especially with incoming college students after the COVID-19 pandemic. It also goes over the process of scheduling an appointment with SUNY New Paltz’s Psychological Center on campus and the need for a better, more accessible method to schedule. The need for at least one mandatory therapy session with all incoming college students is discussed as well.

Therapy is important in maintaining good mental health, and with all the stress college students are under, especially after/during a pandemic, mental health crises among college students are becoming far too common. Unfortunately, many students have fallen through the cracks and been left to flounder on their own at SUNY New Paltz, and that needs to change.

 

To view a PDF version of my assignment, please click here: SUNY New Paltz Needs to Show That It Cares About Its Students’ Mental Health Before It Loses Them

 

SUNY New Paltz Needs to Show that It Cares About Its Students’ Mental Health Before It Loses Them

Image of a student's hand holding a pen, working on homework.

You pace back and forth inside your tiny dorm room, nervously fidgeting with your hands, picking at your lips. What if they don’t take you seriously? What if they ask you something you haven’t thought of? What if they go off script? Are you really that bad? You could probably get away with not saying anything. Yeah, you’d be fine if you just didn’t call. Oh, but you promised your friend you would call. You promised, and you can’t break that. Nervously, you pull out your phone and dial a number you’ve memorized by now from the sheer amount of times you’ve done this song and dance. A shaky breath comes out as you wipe your sweaty palms on your pants, nervous about hitting any wrong buttons. Quickly, you glance over the Google Doc you have opened on your laptop, mentally reviewing any possible questions they may ask and how you want to start the call. Another shaky inhale. You can feel the knot in your stomach growing, feeling physically nauseated. You have to do this, you remind yourself. You promised that if it got bad you would reach out for professional help. Darting your hand forward, you slam on the call button. Immediately, you begin to regret it. They ask you questions, but luckily you’ve prepared for this. You confess your feelings, telling them how you’ve thought about dying and how to do it and how close you are to doing it. They put you on hold. They put you on hold. You tell them you want to die and will kill yourself and they put you on hold. Out of pure shock, a laugh comes bursting forward from your lips for the first time in weeks. Still laughing, you hang up in disbelief. The fact that you laughed is the only reason you decide to stick around; after all, life can’t get much worse than the suicide hotline putting you on hold, right? This might seem like a completely fake scenario, but one student at SUNY New Paltz had this exact experience with the college’s psychological center. Such a situation could have been avoided if SUNY New Paltz made appointments with their psychological center more available or even mandatory.

SUNY New Paltz’s Psychological Center offers psychological counseling appointments starting with their initial “Intake” appointment to assess your situation (“Psychological Counseling Center”). To schedule such an appointment, one must either call the center or go in person to their office. After the first session, The Psychological Center will decide how best to handle your situation, whether that be therapy with New Paltz’s Center or through a different provider in the community. SUNY New Paltz also has a 24/7 hotline during the academic year for students to call when in the event of a mental health emergency. However, as stated on their website, even that isn’t a guarantee as they state “Be sure to speak your name and phone number clearly if you are asked to leave a message,” implying the potential of the call not being picked up, despite it being a mental health hotline that is supposedly open 24/7 (“Psychological Counseling Center”). 

For many students, going to college is often the first time they are away from home and their families. Even for the students more used to such a situation, starting college or changing colleges is a huge transitional time in their lives. Moving to a new environment often means leaving behind the social support system that students have relied on for many years, and a lack of a good support network to turn to in dire situations can lead to drastic and dangerous decisions. Positive and supportive friends and family are positively linked to higher self-esteem, and removing such a system suddenly can have devastating effects (Merianos, Ashley L., et al. 28). To help prevent some of the potential effects of students physically leaving their support network, a mandatory check-in with a trained therapist that is aware of what incoming college students go through during the initial transition should be put in place. This implementation would help prevent students from doing anything drastic or impulsive as they would feel more supported on their campus. Caileigh Sawyer, a first-year student and interviewee, declared she was transferring at the end of the semester and that a session with the Psychological Center would have helped, stating, “I thought coming here would help [with her mental health], but within the first month I wanted to go home.” Homesickness is not uncommon, but for many college students, Sawyer included, ‘being homesick’ is a phrase that barely scratches the surface. Sawyer even stated, “my mental health is awful; I am worried about everything, but I am so sad and have no motivation to do anything. It is so hard to force myself to even do homework.” Even one mandatory check-in with incoming students within the first month of the semester could help. If Sawyer had been made to talk to a counselor she might have been able to find help sooner. As it stands she still doesn’t know where the Psychological Center is or how to schedule an appointment with them. If New Paltz prioritized its students’ mental health more, Sawyer might have stayed and gotten the help she needed.

In order to schedule an appointment with New Paltz’s Psychological Center, one has to look it up through either New Paltz’s website or Google. New Paltz doesn’t advertise its Psychological Center in places college students typically look. No notices hung up on residence hall boards giving the number or location of the center, and I haven’t received an email mentioning the Psychological Center in over a month despite exam season (and subsequent stress) kicking in. Even then, reaching out for help can be extremely difficult, especially when in a strange, new environment. While professors try their best to emphasize taking care of one’s mental health by giving a certain amount of days one can be absent for mental health reasons, just taking mental health days doesn’t necessarily help everyone. Outside of mandatory sessions, making scheduling an appointment more accessible would increase the likelihood of students scheduling one. Having an option to fill out a request for an appointment online would help increase the number of students reaching out for help. Phone calls and face-to-face scheduling can often feel too personal and complicated. Being able to schedule while in a comfortable environment at their speed would help students with busy schedules, phone anxiety, and even students with disabilities that make phone calls difficult. Personally speaking, I hate phone calls as I am hard of hearing, and my hearing aids cannot connect to my phone directly, so I usually have to turn up the volume of my phone, and even then, many miscommunications can happen. Being able to schedule an appointment online would make the whole process more accessible and would encourage students to reach out for help when they need to.

In the wake of the recent pandemic, mental health help is needed even more at colleges. In a recent study, 60.8% of students reported increased feelings of anxiety, 54.1% reported an increase in feelings of depression, and 59.8% reported feelings of loneliness, despite 69.7% reportedly trying to take care of their mental health through either meditation, yoga, physical exercise, mindfulness apps, or professional help (Lee, Jenny, et al. 3, 5). Additionally, many students reported now having an added responsibility of supporting their families, either financially or through looking after children when attending classes online (Lee, Jenny, et al. 6). The addition of stress from looking after their families and transitioning from in-person to online back to in-person classes over almost two years on top of dealing with the usual college stress resulted in many more students with mental health crises. One reason Sawyer decided to transfer colleges is due to the pressure she felt around being back to in-person classes alongside the stress of going through a pandemic. She believes that New Paltz should do more to help students transition from online classes to in-person classes as “[we] freshmen have not taken a real class in person in about two years and are just expected to be able to transition to a harder level of classes and a different type of class without any assistance.” Not to mention, as many students have to help out their families financially, they are stressed about working more hours while going to class and if they can afford to attend school the next semester. Being able to check in with a professional and talk to them about their stress and worries would help the students feel as though the school cares about their mental health and personal lives. Even just one session could help prevent further decline in a student’s mental health.

Many would argue that if a student needs to get help from the Psychological Center they should simply call and schedule an appointment themselves. However, as pointed out previously, even students reporting suicidal feelings have been put on hold. Not to mention, reaching out for help can be incredibly difficult for people. Mental health is rarely mentioned positively in the media; movies and shows are often full of negative stereotypes, which can heavily influence the opinions of young adults and convince them mental health struggles are something to be ashamed of (Riles, Julius Matthews, et al. 2261). This leads to many students having a mentality of simply needing to “suck it up” rather than reaching out for help. If students were made to go to a session and were able to realize how much it helps and how it isn’t as painful as they thought it would be, they would be more willing to reach out for help if they need it. Even students who don’t initially need the session could benefit from a mandatory session as it could help get rid of any negative ideas of therapy they might hold. In the future, if those students feel the need to schedule another appointment, it would be easier as they wouldn’t have to battle the thoughts telling them how weak they are for asking for help. Additionally, being able to schedule a follow-up appointment while walking out from the first session feels easier than having to schedule an appointment all by yourself. It feels easier and less intimidating to simply stop by the desk on the way out rather than having to call in yourself.

Overall, SUNY New Paltz’s Psychological Center should make scheduling appointments more accessible and should even require at least one mandatory session with incoming students to prevent drastic mental health crises. If New Paltz does not do more to help its students with their mental health, it will lose and continue to lose students, either due to them transferring or taking their own lives.

Works Cited

Lee, Jenny, et al. “Impact of COVID-19 on the Mental Health of US College Students.” BMC Psychology, vol. 9, no. 1, 8 June 2021, p. NA. Gale Academic OneFile, link.gale.com/apps/doc/A665425013/AONE?u=nysl_se_sojotru&sid=bookmark-AONE&xid=86fc14ee. Accessed 21 Oct. 2021.

Merianos, Ashley L., et al. “The Impact of Self-Esteem and Social Support on College Students’ Mental Health.” American Journal of Health Studies, vol. 28, no. 1, winter 2013, pp. 27+. Gale Academic OneFile, link.gale.com/apps/doc/A347969670/AONE?u=nysl_se_sojotru&sid=bookmark-AONE&xid=6c736222. Accessed 21 Oct. 2021.

“Psychological Counseling Center.” SUNY New Paltz | Psychological Counseling Center | Individual Counseling, https://www.newpaltz.edu/counseling/individual-counseling/. 

Riles, Julius Matthew, et al. “An Inclination for Intimacy: Depictions of Mental Health and Interpersonal Interaction in Popular Film.” International journal of communication [Online], Apr. 2021, pp. 2260+. Gale Literature Resource Center, link.gale.com/apps/doc/A665415445/LitRC?u=newpaltz&sid=bookmark-LitRC&xid=2c655d49. Accessed 21 Oct. 2021.

Sawyer, Caileigh. Interview. Conducted by Amy Bates, 17 Oct. 2021.

 

 

Persuasive Essay: First Draft

 

Amy Bates

Professor Rigolino

ENG170_11

22 October 2021

SUNY New Paltz Needs to Show that It Cares About Its Students’ Mental Health Before It Loses Them

You pace back and forth inside your tiny dorm room, nervously fidgeting with your hands, picking at your lips. What if they don’t take you seriously? What if they ask you something you haven’t thought of? What if they go off script? Are you really that bad? You could probably get away with not saying anything. Yeah, you’d be fine if you just didn’t call. Oh, but you promised your friend you would call. You promised, and you can’t break that. Nervously, you pull out your phone and dial a number you’ve memorized by now from the sheer amount of times you’ve done this song and dance. A shaky breath comes out as you wipe your sweaty palms on your pants, nervous about hitting any wrong buttons. Quickly, you glance over the Google Doc you have opened on your laptop, mentally reviewing any possible questions they may ask and how you want to start the call. Another shaky inhale. You can feel the knot in your stomach growing, feeling physically nauseated. You have to do this, you remind yourself. You promised that if it got bad you would reach out for professional help. Darting your hand forward, you slam on the call button. Immediately, you begin to regret it. They ask you questions, but luckily you’ve prepared for this. You confess your feelings, telling them how you’ve thought about dying and how to do it and how close you are to doing it. They put you on hold. They put you on hold. You tell them you want to die and will kill yourself and they put you on hold. Out of pure shock, a laugh comes bursting forward from your lips for the first time in weeks. Still laughing, you hang up in disbelief. The fact that you laughed is the only reason you decide to stick around; after all, life can’t get much worse than the suicide hotline putting you on hold, right? This might seem like a completely fake scenario, but one student at SUNY New Paltz had this exact experience with the college’s psychological center. Such a situation could have been avoided if SUNY New Paltz made appointments with their psychological center more available or even mandatory.

SUNY New Paltz’s Psychological Center offers psychological counseling appointments starting with their initial “Intake” appointment to assess your situation (“Psychological Counseling Center”). To schedule such an appointment, one must either call the center or go in person to their office. After the first session, The Psychological Center will decide how best to handle your situation, whether that be therapy with New Paltz’s Center or through a different provider in the community. SUNY New Paltz also has a 24/7 hotline during the academic year for students to call when in the event of a mental health emergency. However, as stated on their website, even that isn’t a guarantee as they state “Be sure to speak your name and phone number clearly if you are asked to leave a message,” implying the potential of the call not being picked up, despite it being a mental health hotline that is supposedly open 24/7 (“Psychological Counseling Center”). 

For many students, going to college is often the first time they are away from home and their families. Even for the students more used to such a situation, starting college or changing colleges is a huge transitional time in their lives. Moving to a new environment often means leaving behind the social support system that students have relied on for many years, and a lack of a good support network to turn to in dire situations can lead to drastic and dangerous decisions. Positive and supportive friends and family are positively linked to higher self-esteem, and removing such a system suddenly can have devastating effects (Merianos, Ashley L., et al. 28). To help prevent some of the potential effects of students physically leaving their support network, a mandatory check-in with a trained therapist that is aware of what incoming college students go through during the initial transition should be put in place. This implementation would help prevent students from doing anything drastic or impulsive as they would feel more supported on their campus. Caileigh Sawyer, a first-year student and interviewee, declared she was transferring at the end of the semester and that a session with the Psychological Center would have helped, stating, “I thought coming here would help [with her mental health], but within the first month I wanted to go home.” Homesickness is not uncommon, but for many college students, Sawyer included, ‘being homesick’ is a phrase that barely scratches the surface. Sawyer even stated, “my mental health is awful; I am worried about everything, but I am so sad and have no motivation to do anything. It is so hard to force myself to even do homework.” Even one mandatory check-in with incoming students within the first month of the semester could help. If Sawyer had been made to talk to a counselor she might have been able to find help sooner. As it stands she still doesn’t know where the Psychological Center is or how to schedule an appointment with them. If New Paltz prioritized its students’ mental health more, Sawyer might have stayed and gotten the help she needed.

In order to schedule an appointment with New Paltz’s Psychological Center, one has to look it up through either New Paltz’s website or Google. New Paltz doesn’t advertise its Psychological Center in places college students typically look. No notices hung up on residence hall boards giving the number or location of the center, and I haven’t received an email mentioning the Psychological Center in over a month despite exam season (and subsequent stress) kicking in. Even then, reaching out for help can be extremely difficult, especially when in a strange, new environment. While professors try their best to emphasize taking care of one’s mental health by giving a certain amount of days one can be absent for mental health reasons, just taking mental health days doesn’t necessarily help everyone. Outside of mandatory sessions, making scheduling an appointment more accessible would increase the likelihood of students scheduling one. Having an option to fill out a request for an appointment online would help increase the number of students reaching out for help. Phone calls and face-to-face scheduling can often feel too personal and complicated. Being able to schedule while in a comfortable environment at their speed would help students with busy schedules, phone anxiety, and even students with disabilities that make phone calls difficult. Personally speaking, I hate phone calls as I am hard of hearing, and my hearing aids cannot connect to my phone directly, so I usually have to turn up the volume of my phone, and even then, many miscommunications can happen. Being able to schedule an appointment online would make the whole process more accessible and would encourage students to reach out for help when they need to.

In the wake of the recent pandemic, mental health help is needed even more at colleges. In a recent study, 60.8% of students reported increased feelings of anxiety, 54.1% reported an increase in feelings of depression, and 59.8% reported feelings of loneliness, despite 69.7% reportedly trying to take care of their mental health through either meditation, yoga, physical exercise, mindfulness apps, or professional help (Lee, Jenny, et al. 3, 5). Additionally, many students reported now having an added responsibility of supporting their families, either financially or through looking after children when attending classes online (Lee, Jenny, et al. 6). The addition of stress from looking after their families and transitioning from in-person to online back to in-person classes over almost two years on top of dealing with the usual college stress resulted in many more students with mental health crises. One reason Sawyer decided to transfer colleges is due to the pressure she felt around being back to in-person classes alongside the stress of going through a pandemic. She believes that New Paltz should do more to help students transition from online classes to in-person classes as “[we] freshmen have not taken a real class in person in about two years and are just expected to be able to transition to a harder level of classes and a different type of class without any assistance.” Not to mention, as many students have to help out their families financially, they are stressed about working more hours while going to class and if they can afford to attend school the next semester. Being able to check in with a professional and talk to them about their stress and worries would help the students feel as though the school cares about their mental health and personal lives. Even just one session could help prevent further decline in a student’s mental health.

Many would argue that if a student needs to get help from the Psychological Center they should simply call and schedule an appointment themselves. However, as pointed out previously, even students reporting suicidal feelings have been put on hold. Not to mention, reaching out for help can be incredibly difficult for people. Mental health is rarely mentioned positively in the media; movies and shows are often full of negative stereotypes, which can heavily influence the opinions of young adults and convince them mental health struggles are something to be ashamed of (Riles, Julius Matthews, et al. 2261). This leads to many students having a mentality of simply needing to “suck it up” rather than reaching out for help. If students were made to go to a session and were able to realize how much it helps and how it isn’t as painful as they thought it would be, they would be more willing to reach out for help if they need it. Even students who don’t initially need the session could benefit from a mandatory session as it could help get rid of any negative ideas of therapy they might hold. In the future, if those students feel the need to schedule another appointment, it would be easier as they wouldn’t have to battle the thoughts telling them how weak they are for asking for help. Additionally, being able to schedule a follow-up appointment while walking out from the first session feels easier than having to schedule an appointment all by yourself. It feels easier and less intimidating to simply stop by the desk on the way out rather than having to call in yourself.

Overall, SUNY New Paltz’s Psychological Center should make scheduling appointments more accessible and should even require at least one mandatory session with incoming students to prevent drastic mental health crises. If New Paltz does not do more to help its students with their mental health, it will lose and continue to lose students, either due to them transferring or taking their own lives.

Works Cited

Lee, Jenny, et al. “Impact of COVID-19 on the Mental Health of US College Students.” BMC Psychology, vol. 9, no. 1, 8 June 2021, p. NA. Gale Academic OneFile, link.gale.com/apps/doc/A665425013/AONE?u=nysl_se_sojotru&sid=bookmark-AONE&xid=86fc14ee. Accessed 21 Oct. 2021.

Merianos, Ashley L., et al. “The Impact of Self-Esteem and Social Support on College Students’ Mental Health.” American Journal of Health Studies, vol. 28, no. 1, winter 2013, pp. 27+. Gale Academic OneFile, link.gale.com/apps/doc/A347969670/AONE?u=nysl_se_sojotru&sid=bookmark-AONE&xid=6c736222. Accessed 21 Oct. 2021.

“Psychological Counseling Center.” SUNY New Paltz | Psychological Counseling Center | Individual Counseling, https://www.newpaltz.edu/counseling/individual-counseling/. 

Riles, Julius Matthew, et al. “An Inclination for Intimacy: Depictions of Mental Health and Interpersonal Interaction in Popular Film.” International journal of communication [Online], Apr. 2021, pp. 2260+. Gale Literature Resource Center, link.gale.com/apps/doc/A665415445/LitRC?u=newpaltz&sid=bookmark-LitRC&xid=2c655d49. Accessed 21 Oct. 2021.

Sawyer, Caileigh. Interview. Conducted by Amy Bates, 17 Oct. 2021.