I agree with Sam, about filling out that questionairre. At first, I took it seriously- i thought I had to answer truthfully, because I was always told that I “must tell the truth to doctors”, because somehow they will find out or be able to detect if you don’t. But then I realized that if I answered “yes” for any of those questions (have you been feeling down, depressed, hopeless, etc..) I would be referred to the wellness center for counseling, and silly, short – sighted me, I used up my 10 free counseling sessions between the 2 semesters of my freshman year!

Yep, and the most helpful advice I recieved was the following: When expressing my anxiety about the impending Sabbaths (every friday) or holidays, when orthodox Jews are forbidden from using electricity (read: no communication with people you hadn’t made previously arranged plans to meet, in walking distance from your home) including phones, computers (the way I stayed halfway sane at that point), I was told by a gentle Millie Sanchez- Nestor (how do I even remember her name, 3 years later?) that perhaps I could “go to a museum, watch a movie, or read a book” when I began to feel anxious about the upcoming foreboding 24, 48, or (this happens maybe once a year) 72 hour bout without communication with the outside world.

Sorry for getting all self- pitying here, but that is my experience. I had been dealing with depression/ anxiety issues, and a psychiatrist at the NYU health center put me on a random anti- depressant that didn’t change anything and eventually was taken away, and I went to those 10 free therapy sessions, recieving helpful bits of advice like the aforementioned “do something else to distract you from what is bothering you.”

Gee thanks, next I’m headed to search using key words about myself in Craigslist “missed personals,” see if someone noticed me and fell in love with me.

It’s actually a misconception that NYU has a “high suicide rate.”

If you crunch the numbers, we actually have a relatively low suicide rate compared to other schools of our size. The suicides here just happened to occur very close together and were highly publicized.

@Sergio I wonder if that misconception has also been fueled (aside from the media storm) by the grievances Sam lists in her comment: the administration seems downright PARANOID of people dying on their watch, and so every freshmen gets bombarded with Wellness Center info. If the suicide rate isn’t that high, then why so much hoopla about 9999? Maybe the administration actually cares if students are happy or not, who knows. Also, suicide isn’t the only thing the Wellness Center wants to prevent–they’re also trying to prevent students from being overcome by depression, which might occur at higher rates at NYU than at other schools (for various reasons). If you think the high suicide rate is a misconception, what are your thoughts on NYU’s approach to mental health?

I went to the Wellness Center my first year at NYU to deal with some anxiety/depression issues. I saw a psychiatrist after just a short while and after explaining what I was feeling I was prescribed a low dosage of Klonopin, an anxiolytic drug. I overdosed on it and spent a week in the hospital not long after.

I was easily prescribed a highly potent medication without much screening of any kind.

They have good intentions, but I question how effective the Wellness Center really is in these sort of situations.

“The program seems focused on determining how much of a liability one is to the institution.”

I’ll admit, I’ve never approached the Wellness Exchange for help, but reading Sam’s assessment of how the program makes her feel (whatever its “good intentions”) breaks my heart.

It is hard enough admitting to yourself that you need help in the first place, but then to be asked to place your feelings on a spectrum of suicidal to buoyant is the horribly patronizing. Mental illness is an experience unique to each individual, and if the people at the Wellness Exchange want provide meaningful help then they need to realize it takes more care than a questionnaire and a couple of one hour sessions to figure out what is wrong with someone.

I am glad the Wellness Exchange is highly publicized by NYU, because no one should feel alone/ashamed/desperate about needing that kind of relief. However, if the Wellness Exchange is someone’s first experience seeking help with his/her mental illness and that experience is a bad one, then I fear the Wellness Exchange will just end up discouraging college kids from seeking treatment at all in the future.

Unfortunately, this article doesn’t really seem to understand what NYU – a leader in college mental health services – is trying to do.

The demand for college mental health services has expanded dramatically – over the past three years, demand for counseling services has risen 28% from 25000 visits to 32000 visits. Similar increases have been reported by other college counseling centers throughout the country. Responding to student mental health needs is a national challenge.

At NYU, our approach is to focus on student wellness. Why? Because we believe that the core reason students come here is to pursue their studies, and supporting their good health – whether physical or mental – is crucial to enabling them to achieve academic success.

There is definitely an approach to mental health services that relies on people to come in and seek help on their own. At NYU, these students often contact the Wellness Exchange or Counseling and Behavioral Health Services directly. But NYU – and 19 other colleges – have also augmented this traditional approach. We know that among the health challenges that students deal with, depression is not uncommon. So, working together as the National College Depression Partnership (NCDP), a consortium of 20 colleges and universities including Columbia, UCLA, and Princeton and coordinated by NYU, we implemented an assessment instrument – a short interview-based screening, really – that we administer whenever students come into the health center (for a sore throat, or physical exams as examples) to enable us to engage students who may be feeling depressed and might benefit from further inquiry and if appropriate, treatment and/or referral.

It has been proven to be a valuable model for gauging and responding to students’ mental health needs-particularly those who hesitate to engage in formal counseling. Your readers might want to take a look at this thoughtful and balanced piece on the project by Inside Higher Ed: http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2009/05/29/depression

As the story notes, during the 2008-09 academic year, colleges and universities in the project “identified more than 2,000 who had depression or other serious mental health conditions for which they were not seeking treatment. Based on follow-up results, more than 90 percent of those with clinical depression or conditions that ’severely impaired’ their functioning were in formal treatment programs within four weeks of the first screening, and almost half of them reported ‘normal or near normal’ functioning being restored after only 12 weeks of treatment. THOSE RESULTS REPRESENT SIGNIFICANT GAINS OVER TYPICAL RATES (emphasis added).”

The bottom line is that this approach is holistic because we care about the whole person-in asking depression screening questions, we find that many students are pleased that health providers care enough to ask about how students are doing emotionally. Answering these questions should lead to a dialogue with healthcare providers about how they might help, similar to screening for smoking or alcohol use. However, this is not mandated: students are free to refuse the screening as with any other screening, but we find that once students understand that we are interested in the whole person, and that we can help them get the assistance they might need and want, that they often recognize the value of this process.

@Daniel Yeah, that happened to me too. Exact same situation (except it was sophomore year), same drug. I wasn’t hospitalized, but I was a disaster! I have no clue why they prescribed me such a heavy-duty drug. I was on it for two weeks, and I just walked around like a zombie, not realizing what was wrong. Trusting NYU mental health services is hard, now… I’ve stopped using them.

Here at Columbia, we have the 10 free counseling sessions things too. It’s per year, I think. Of course, they don’t tell you about the limit until you approach it. Who comes up with these policies?

I actually had a wonderful experience with Wellness and both the therapists and psychiatrists there during my 3 years at NYU. The Wellness hotline was extremely helpful for after hours problems, as was the walk in clinic for daytime problems. I participated in a weekly group and went to the stress clinic as well. Compared to other schools, I think NYU has fantastic counseling services!

I’m glad Henry Chung could take the time to copy from Wellness Center PR/mission statements.

Freshman year I contacted the Wellness Center, and was told I could receive a ‘phone triage’ (a series of questions to figure out how desperate your needs are) in two weeks, with an appointment any where from two weeks to four weeks after that because they were experiencing a backlog.

Four to six weeks before your first contact with a counselor? Doesn’t seem like that would useful to someone who actually needed immediate help. And although we have the after-hours hot line I’ve heard more horror stories about it than I can recall.

NYU’s attempts at expanding access seem to fall flat from an Administration that is looking at our image, rather than current students.

I only had a brief experience with an NYU counselor (not at the Wellness Center) my freshman year, and that was specifically to seek a referral for an outside therapist to treat OCD, with which I was diagnosed the month before I came to NYU. The counselor just took a name out of a database – the nearest therapist who had ‘OCD’ listed among their specialties. She couldn’t tell me anything about him. I went, and soon discovered he was a Freudian analyst – psychoanalysis is not an effective treatment for OCD. I wish they did better screenings for outside referrals. I went looking on my own and finally found a good cognitive-behavioral therapist on my 4th try.

I had a friend with post-traumatic stress disorder who had just come back to NYU after a year-and-a-half because she had lost her funding, and had just managed to scrape together enough to return. (She was receiving no help from her parents, but couldn’t receive proper funding because they were wealthy and therefore should have been able to support her.) She was seeing an NYU counselor because of flashbacks and major life stressors she was experiencing. A couple weeks into the semester, her NYU card was suspended because not all her money had come in on time. When she mentioned this to the counselor as another stressor, the counselor told her that she could no longer be seen, and didn’t give her a referral to a free or low-cost outside clinic. When her money came in later and she was reinstated, it took a lot of convincing on my part to get her to go back to the Wellness Center. She no longer trusted them.

I think the screening instrument is a good start; tools like that are excellent for catching symptoms of depression/anxiety that people might not realize are approaching the danger zone. (Of course, they’re relatively easy to scam if you really don’t want to see a counselor.) But I would like NYU Wellness to take responsibility for seeing a student’s mental health care through to completion, for example by:

1) Better screening of outside providers
2) Follow-up on referral of outside providers (e.g. e-mail to student a month or two after referral asking if they have taken advantage of the referral, and if so, to rate the provider, and if not, why not – problem cleared up, not good fit, etc.?)
3) Ensuring that every student who uses up their free sessions, or must leave the Center’s counselors for whatever reason (like my friend above) is referred to a quality free or low-cost clinic, or more expensive provider if they have good insurance/can afford it and request that option

Now I graduated a few years ago, so things might have improved. And the system overall is excellent; these are just a few suggestions for further growth. I had a rough few mental health years at NYU, and even though I resented the intrusion of NYU faculty and staff at the time, looking back, I’m glad they cared.