Colleges are scrambling to re-evaluate mental health resources after several university students have taken their lives in the past academic year. Arizona State University has now seen three suicides this year, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology has seen two this month and the University of Montana has seen two this past week.

Syracuse University must work toward fixing gaps in current mental health services. Students are at the heart of the university community, meaning their health and well-being should be a main priority for the university administration.

A lack of promotion of important resources and the unsatisfactory services provided for students is a disservice that endangers the students’ health and well-being. According to Emory University’s Suicide Statistics one in 10 college students contemplates suicide and more than 1,000 suicides take place on college campuses each year, making it apparent that mental health services must be more present and available to students.

College students’ lives consist of a large-scale balancing act: students must earn high grades in a generally competitive academic space, manage a budget — often with the idea of overwhelming debt always in mind — and still maintain a social life. For many students, on top of everything, they must still be a dependable member of their families, a successful athlete, or maintain a job and/or an extracurricular role in organizations on campus or in the community.

Statistically, according to the American Psychological Association, minority students, whether it is on the basis of their ability, ethnicity, financial standing, gender, race or sexuality, take on even more stress due to their minority status. The additional pressures these students take on may interfere with their adjustment and integration into the university community.

When students are faced with these constant pressures, they must feel safe when reaching out to counseling services on campus. However, despite student efforts to change this practice, the Counseling Center continues to only provide counseling services to students on a short-term basis before referring students to “an appropriate therapist in the community.”

Students should not have to deal with the emotional and financial burden of being re-directed to a third-party mental health service, but should find comfort, convenience and privacy in on-campus services. The administration must recognize that dependable mental health services should always be ready for students to take advantage of at SU, whether or not they are short or long-term needs.

A lack of initiative taken by the administration to place importance on the topic of students’ mental health is reflected through decisions made in the past, such as when THE General Body informed students that only one psychiatrist was available to the combined enrollment of SU and the State University of New York College of Environmental Science and Forestry, which is 23,517 students.

More so, because of the stressors college students encounter, there should be an increase in the distribution of information regarding mental health services. Students in every college should have easy access to the materials they need in order to easily inform themselves and take advantage of counseling services, student resources and stress management groups on campus. Even the most valuable, life-saving resources are useless if they are invisible to the average student in daily life.

While progress is being made due to the efforts of dedicated students and faculty, there are still lapses in the system that must be resolved. In a national culture that stigmatizes mental illness, the importance of mental health should remain present in university dialogue so students feel safe, secure and informed when reaching out to resources on campus.

Alexa Diaz is a freshman magazine journalism major. Her column appears weekly. She can be reached at adiaz02@syr.edu and followed on Twitter @AlexaLucina.

Published on March 25, 2015 at 12:05 am