Ohio University is lacking in mental health professionals for students, relative to its comparable schools.
OU's 10 peer institutions have a better student-to-staff ratio than OU, said Jeanne Heaton, director of Counseling and Psychological Services at Hudson Health Center. Enrollment at Clemson University, for example, is 15,531, and it has nine full-time mental health professionals, while OU has only about 5 for its 19,255 students. And seven out of 10 of the universities have more psychiatric service hours than OU.
I think it's pretty clear the need is high
Heaton said. We know that probably somewhere in the neighborhood of 10 percent to 15 percent of college students have problems that are significant and that should be addressed and we're only seeing about 7 percent.
Therapy services are available free of charge to students at Porter Hall through the OU Psychology and Social Work Clinic, but they meet with graduate student clinicians rather than full-time mental health professionals. The clinic selects clients who have moderate mental health needs, said Kim Lassiter, clinic director. Otherwise, students are referred to Hudson.
Students also have the option to pursue, for a fee, formal assessments for learning disabilities and attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder, among other conditions.
The primary reason universities provide mental health professionals for students is to prevent students from dropping out, said Kip Alishio, director of student counseling services at Miami University.
Psychological and Counseling Services at OU currently sees about 1,300 students per year. On average, each student attends about four sessions. Studies conducted on counseling and student retention exhibit that there is a substantial increase in students retained when they seek and receive counseling. If OU improved its counseling services the retention rate would increase by 10 percent, resulting in 130 more students remaining in school, Heaton said.
It becomes more important at places like Miami University and Ohio University which are in relatively rural areas where there aren't a whole lot of mental health services available in the community for students to go to
Alishio said. It kind of falls upon the university to provide a fair amount of those services.
In addition, it is a growing national trend that students are coming to college with more mental health needs, according to Patty McSteen, associate dean of students.
In November of last year, Student Senate unanimously passed a resolution urging the university to increase the psychological services to better meet the needs of students. Senate advocated establishing a drop-in clinic that could be run by interns and post-doctorate students in an effort to increase the visibility of the center and exposing the services to more students.
I think it's important to know that we're all a team trying to respond to this
Heaton said. What we would like to be able to do is continue to provide services for students in a timely and effective way
and not have to compromise what we do because of the staffing difficulties.
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