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THE MONITOR

Lucy Meola

Mental Health Support at Hamilton: Supply, Demand, and a Possible New Direction


Center for Health and Wellness | Anne Petrova '27

Students at Hamilton dealing with mental health struggles experience competition to gain access to limited Counseling Center resources. As a consequence of this competition, many students report frustration at the amount of time it takes them to access the care they need. At the same time, students demonstrate little awareness of the Student Support Care Team, the other office on campus that provides mental health support and often does so more quickly than the Counseling Center. 

 

Many Hamilton students make use of the Counseling Center. David Walden, the Director of the Counseling Center said that “In any given year, we serve about 35-40% of the student population.” This amounts to over 700 students each year. Still, Walden says, the Counseling Center has never reached full capacity and wait times for initial consultations are usually about one business day, although it can take longer to find times that fit into students’ schedules.

 

In contrast to Walden’s statement, many students who spoke with The Monitor reported challenges getting into the Counseling Center System. Madison Harland ‘26 remembered the stress of trying to book an in-person therapist before slots ran out at the beginning of the school year, saying “It’s very clear that the demand is much, much greater than the supply, though Harland found that “It’s pretty easy to get treatment once you’re in the system.”


One student, who will be referred to as Anonymous Student 1, found it “very difficult” to set up an initial consultation in the middle of a semester. The student described calling the Counseling Center multiple times over the course of a week before being able to set up an initial consultation.


Another anonymous student, Anonymous Student 2, explained how the strain on therapist availability affected their Counseling Center experience. After seeing a therapist through the Counseling Center during the spring semester, they received an email in the summer suggesting they switch therapists for the fall. “It was just very unexpected and I just felt a little rejected,” they said. “They were trying to kick me out of the Counseling Center to go to a different place off campus to get care… Like, I’m an international student; I don’t have a driver’s license; I don’t know how US healthcare system works, and also it’s more expensive, ‘cause it’s outside care…After fifteen emails I fully said ‘I’m not doing this. Give me a therapist,’ and I got my current therapist who I love.”


Walden explained in an interview that one reason students may feel this way is that the Counseling Center runs on a “treatment model” rather than an “absorption model.” Under this model, the Counseling Center prioritizes increasing the number of appointments each user receives rather than admitting a larger number of users.


Despite frustrations about the process of initiating treatment at the Counseling Center, interviewees unanimously viewed the Counseling Center as the primary source of mental health support on campus and say they would begin there to deal with any mental health concerns. Most described positive experiences with their treatment once they were matched with the services they needed. As Anonymous Student 1 put it, the Counseling Center is “known for being so nice. I don’t know that other offices have that reputation for being so welcoming and easy to talk to. Even if I didn’t think that they would be the ones to help me I would totally go to them first.”


Becca McAuliffe ‘26 added, “The therapists they have are all really, really great and it is very beneficial to actually go to one in person.”


The Student Support Care Team is the primary alternative to the Counseling Center. Students can expect quick response times from the SSCT, which Emma Moteyunas, the Student Support Case Manager says typically reaches out to students no longer than 48 hours after receiving a referral. 


Few of the students The Monitor spoke with, including those who felt frustrated by delays in obtaining care at the Counseling Center, expressed awareness of the SSCT and what it offers. In fact, only two of the students who spoke to the Monitor felt confident in their understanding of what the SSCT provides, and both were community advisors. Addy Grace ‘26 mentioned that she “only knew about the Care Team from being a CA. I didn’t know about it my first year.”


Similarly, McAuliffe revealed that when she learned about the SSCT during CA training she “was very surprised. I don’t think it’s marketed very well, honestly.”


As Sarah Solomon, the Associate Dean of Students for Student Support explained, the SSCT, which formed in 2022, is a service that provides case managers to students in various types of distress. Unlike the Counseling Center, which has a strict confidentiality policy, the Student Support Care Team often works to advocate for students by communicating with others who play important roles in students’ well-being. 


This difference in confidentiality policies allows the SSCT to actively reach out to students in distress: something the Counseling Center cannot do. On their website, the SSCT includes a referral form through which any member of the Hamilton community can recommend support for another student. Few of the students interviewed for this piece were aware of the “share a concern” form. Harland expressed no familiarity with the service and recalled attempting to support a friend struggling with their mental health and feeling like “we could only call campo or do nothing.” 


Solomon broke down what happens when the SSCT receives a referral. If the referral comes from someone other than the student in need, the first step is to talk to the person who filed the report to better understand the situation. Following that conversation, the SSCT can then make contact with the student about whom the report was filed.


However, when students do use SSCT, they often find them to be a helpful resource. 


“I’ve had really good experiences with them,” said Grace. “I think that they are really good at connecting people to different things on campus that might be helpful.”


Other responses have been more lukewarm, with Anonymous Student 2 saying “I think it is good if you just need someone to talk to or need some guidance, but in my case it felt like it was just kind of useless because I needed help with rescheduling exams and they could not provide me with a letter to support it.” Anonymous Student 2 then added that, after a meeting with the SSCT they were able to meet with the Office of Accessibility Resources to obtain academic accommodations; they simply did not feel like the first meeting with the SSCT was necessary.


Both Solomon and Walden emphasized that the Counseling Center and the Care Team work together and have a shared philosophy regarding their engagement with students. As Walden puts it, “Neither of our offices are really pushing engagement… It’s more like an open door rather than a hand reaching out and grabbing someone.” He explained that both offices believe resources should be available for students when they choose to use them, but that the Counseling Center and the SSCT both respect when students prefer not to engage. Walden adds, “we both see our offices…as more aligned with [students than with the institution]. We’re here for the students.”


Walden and Solomon are also working together to spearhead an effort to rethink mental health on campus. Walden broached this topic with the entire campus community in a September 6th email entitled “Exploring Well-Being & Mental Health.” In the email, Walden announced an initiative to research “the diversity of ways mental health, as part of our overall well-being, is understood and experienced differently by members of our community here at Hamilton.”


Walden elaborated on this effort in an interview, explaining that their plan is to gather information on prominent ideas about mental health on campus. Once the Counseling Center understands how students are thinking about mental health, Walden says, they can share those trends with the campus community and say, “‘Here’s what everybody thinks. Does this seem compatible with well-being?’” Walden hopes that this type of dialogue will help identify and begin to change shared ideas that are detrimental to students’ mental well-being.


Grace echoed the need for the Counseling Center and SSCT to increase their involvement with the greater campus community, saying “I definitely think there should be more dialogue in terms of reaching out to students.”


The goal of this dialogue, as Walden explained, is to figure out “what is the system of supports around a student that can help things from getting to be an emergency? And that includes CAs; it includes advisors; it includes professors; it includes Counseling Center; it includes Student Support Care Team… So it’s not just one resource.”


While the students interviewed for this piece mentioned relying on friends, professors, and resources like the Office of Accessibility as part of their “system of supports,” the common thread throughout all of the interviews was the desire not for a broader system but for in-person, professional resources. When asked about what they would change regarding mental health support at Hamilton in general, Harland and Anonymous Student 2 both mentioned wanting access to in-person psychiatry and all of the interviewees expressed hopes that in-person therapy would become more available. 


Harland summed up this sentiment, saying, “it shouldn’t be as hard as it is to get a spot at the Counseling Center.”


Underscoring the importance of in-person care to Hamilton students, McAuliffe remembered that she was “very, very delighted to know that you can get an in-person therapist” at Hamilton. However, as the experiences of the interviewees demonstrate, the process of getting in-person mental health support on campus is not always straightforward, and increasing its accessibility is a student need.

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