Psych check a requirement for some returners

By Ryan Groshong

The university has created new criteria for students who want to return to Santa Clara after leaving for mental health problems -- a change from years past that allowed students to return without being evaluated first by a health specialist.

"The main difference between this and the previous policy is that in the past students weren't evaluated prior to re-entry," said Larry Wolfe, director of the Counseling Center and the Cowell Student Health Center, who supports the new policy. "Now we want students to re-enter not only based on desire to succeed but also given the tools to do so."

While the requirements differ for each student based on the seriousness of their own mental health and past behavior, a common requirement would include a recommendation from the student's therapist or doctor. Students could be required to register as having a disability with the Drahmann Academic Advising Center.

"We realized that we needed to take a more comprehensive approach," said Lisa Millora, assistant dean for student life. "We were seeing an increased number of students withdrawing for medical and psychological reasons. We had no way to ensure these students emotional and physical stability."

Nationwide, colleges have been stepping up awareness programs for depression and other mental illnesses. New York University, Cornell and Columbia have placed counselors in residence halls. Both the University of Illinois and the University of Puget Sound require any student who threatens or attempts suicide to attend mandatory counseling sessions.

According to figures provided by Cowell Student Health Center from the national 2004 College Health Survey, 10.6 percent of Santa Clara students reported having experienced anxiety in the previous 12 months, and 17.3 percent reported experiencing depression. These percentages are close to the national averages of college students.

Between the spring and fall quarters of last year, Cowell had 355 mental health visits. This number also includes follow-up appointments, rather than the total number of patients. Mental health cases represent 7 percent of all visits to Cowell.

Wolfe claims there are two areas that lead to student depression.

"The first is genetics or biochemical factors," Wolfe said. "Some people are naturally susceptible to depression, eating disorders, and anxiety because of their pre-programming. The second factor is environment, what goes on in one's life. Generally mental illness cases are a combination of the two."

The university says it is taking steps to identify depression and other mental illnesses among students. This year, the school held a new depression screening day that resulted in several students being recommended for treatment. The screening process will eventually be made available online. In the residence halls, community facilitators are given training to identify indicators of depression and can refer students to the counseling center.

Despite these precautionary measures, it is still easy for students to suffer from significant mental health problems without the university knowing.

Lauren Salaices, a physician at Cowell, believes that even at a small campus setting like Santa Clara, many students can "feel kind of anonymous, lost in the shuffle."

Wolfe says that the period of college "is a transition state, and any transition state presents challenges. Residence halls, making new friends, new decisions; it can be very difficult."

Many times the university is not aware of the mental health histories of students when they enter the school. Unless a student is taking medication for depression or lists mental health issues as a medical condition on their physical form, the student's condition may remain unknown.

"I think it's a privacy issue on their part, people don't want to be scrutinized," Salaices said. "This is particularly problematic for students with eating disorders who put 'no medical condition' on their physical."

Dealing with student privacy rights can further complicate treatment. Notifying a student's family of mental health problems he or she is experiencing, without the student's consent, is a violation of the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act.

But Salaices admits that under extreme circumstances, the university will call parents without the consent of students. Such circumstances could include a student being taken to the hospital for risk of suicide or for a potentially fatal eating disorder.

"I'm willing to be sued if it's the right thing for the patient," Salaices said. But she clarified that such a step would be extremely rare and a last-case scenario.

Suicide is the second-leading cause of death among college students. While these suicides are certainly emotionally traumatic for a university, colleges can also face damaged reputations and costly lawsuits from the student's family.

In one case, the family of a Massachusetts Institute of Technology student who committed suicide in 2000 is suing the school for $27 million, claiming that the university was overprotective of their daughter's privacy rights and did not provide adequate health care.

Some students agree that under extreme cases, this is an acceptable step for the university to take.

"I think that the school's main responsibility should be to encourage the student to tell their parents about problems they may be having on their own," freshman Tim McManus said. "They should only tell the parents if the student is not in a capacity to do it themselves."

Despite these issues, the university maintains that the new policy was drafted with student health in mind, not liability.

"Liability was not our first concern," Millora said. "We wanted to ensure that a student was taking correct steps to be healthy."

* Contact Ryan Groshong at (408) 554-4546 or rgroshong@scu.edu.