CORONAVIRUS (COVID-19) RESOURCE CENTER Read More
Add To Favorites

‘Crisis on UNC’s campus’: University takes time to grieve and focus on mental health

Charlotte Observer - 10/13/2021

Over the past two days, UNC-Chapel Hill students placed heaps of pink carnations, white daisies and golden sunflowers on green plastic chairs sitting in The Pit in the heart of campus to honor their classmates, friends and students who have died this semester.

Students taped dozens of handwritten notes of affirmation to a classmate whose death was reported to police as a suicide outside a dorm on Saturday. They also wrote to those who may be struggling with their mental health with messages like “you are not alone” and “you are someone’s why.”

At the foot of the chairs, students lit votive candles, colored the bricks in a pastel rainbow with chalk and wrote “Your fire will never truly die. R.I.P.”

“Immediately, I felt a lot of grief and really heartbroken,” senior Savannah Shoemake said about learning that a student died this weekend and another had reportedly attempted suicide. “As someone who has been there in a very tough situation with mental health … I know how isolating of an experience it is to be in crisis on UNC’s campus.”

The university canceled Tuesday’s classes after student leaders advocated for a Wellness Day to give them time to grieve and seek support without the pressure of academic assignments and midterms.

Some students hung a large orange bed sheet on the front of their fraternity house on Franklin Street with “You r loved” spray-painted on it. A few blocks away another sheet said “YOU MATTER” with a hand-painted heart and the phone number for the national suicide prevention hotline, 1-800-273-8255.

On social media, students, parents, professors and alumni also shared stories about coping with anxiety and depression and dealing with campus health resources that some say are understaffed and underfunded. They also offered community resources, phone numbers and advice on how to properly support each other.

Chris Suggs, a recent UNC-CH graduate and former student leader, said his generation has a greater recognition for the need to have mental health support and an acceptance that it’s OK to not be OK. They’re working to remove negative stigmas with having or suffering from mental illnesses that may previously have hindered people from seeking help.

“I’m proud of my peers in that we’ve challenged society’s norms in terms of what’s acceptable,” Suggs said. “I think what we’re seeing is as a society, especially as a generation, being more cognizant that we have to take care of ourselves.”

UNC’s response to the ‘mental health crisis’

UNC-CH Chancellor Kevin Guskiewicz said Sunday that the campus and the country are “in the middle of a mental health crisis,” noting that college-age students carry an increased risk of suicide. His emailed message to the campus community canceling classes was sent out Sunday on World Mental Health Day and mentioned the deaths of two students on campus in the past month.

Students on campus can sit with experts from Counseling and Psychological Services (CAPS), the Department of Psychiatry, School of Medicine and School of Social Work to process their feelings at eight locations around campus.

These “community support centers” at residence halls, Wilson Library, the Campus Y and other locations are open from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. or 6 p.m. each day this week. Students can also sign up for virtual or in-person sessions through CAPS.

The university also shared information about peer-to-peer mental health resources, a self-screening tool for students, peer tutoring and academic support, peer wellness groups and coaches and other wellness info about healthy relationships, nutrition and financial literacy.

While immediate support is offered, Guskiewicz said the university is committed to providing sustainable support beyond one day or week.

UNC-CH will host a mental health summit later this month, bringing together faculty, staff and student leaders to address the national crises together. Dr. Samantha Meltzer-Brody, Assad Meymandi Distinguished Professor and chair of the psychiatry department in the School of Medicine, will lead that effort. The university also launched the Heels Care Network, a campus-wide campaign to promote and support mental health awareness.

“We are very aware of the issues, we want action and better funding and more services,” Shoemake said. “Conversations are good, but we don’t want to stop at conversations.

“We need, for the well-being and health of our community and students, decisive action from our leaders, and I don’t think we’re getting that,” she said.

Increase in mental health challenges during COVID

UNC-CH and UNC System staff have convened task forces, held committee meetings and presented mental health reports to board members over the past couple of years in an effort to confront this issue.

Experts and medical professionals found a “significant increase in the incidence of mental health challenges” among students, which accelerated during the COVID-19 pandemic, as reported to the UNC System Board of Governors in May.

For Suggs, who graduated as senior class president from UNC-CH in 2021, campus mental health services weren’t enough during the fall semester of his senior year.

Suggs was a leader in the UNC-CH Black Student Movement as the campus and the nation wrestled with political unrest, social justice and racial protests spurred by the police killing of George Floyd. Suggs was watching COVID-19 cases and deaths rise, while facing his own health issues that compromised his immune system. And he’d recently lost a job that made it difficult to pay for the off-campus apartment where he and his younger sister, a freshman at UNC, were living and taking online classes.

“It felt like the toll of the world was really hitting me,” Suggs said.

He went to CAPS looking for help and ultimately opted to withdraw from classes. He decided that was the best solution, given the services, resources and capabilities that campus mental health centers and staff could provide.

“I don’t think that there is one single service or enough wellness days in the world to support students that are dealing with the struggles that have gone on, especially in the past year and a half,” Suggs said.

More mental health support on campus

Shoemake said she walked into CAPS sobbing during the middle of the fall semester of her freshman year. She filled out pages of paperwork, noting her family medical history and previous diagnosis of having anxiety and depression. Shoemake said the staff told her they couldn’t see her because of her previous mental illness and offered to set up an appointment a month later to refer her to a therapist off-campus.

“I didn’t feel like I could make it a month, I didn’t feel like I could make it another minute,” Shoemake said.

She said she was also further worried about the barriers of how she would afford outpatient therapy and how she would get there without a car.

Students have said they’re told the limited care is an issue of funding and that CAPS doesn’t have the resources to hire the number of staff to address students with mental health problems. CAPS staff sometimes tell students their issues were too serious or too intense for their capacity as a service provider and are referred elsewhere.

“We’re the number three public university … with a wealth of knowledge and resources, yet our student health service doesn’t feel equipped enough to support students where they’re at and with their struggles,” Suggs said.

Any student can walk in to CAPS for an initial assessment or call the CAPS hotline 24 hours a day 7, days a week. CAPS offers brief individual therapy to students seeking support for issues that are relatively well defined and which can be adequately addressed or resolved in a brief time frame, according to the website.

There is no limit to those sessions, but they are not guaranteed to students. That therapy is determined “through clinical judgment of students’ needs during the initial assessment,” according to CAPS.

Some students and faculty have complained about long wait lists to talk with counselors or get appointments on campus.

But at a faculty meeting Monday, Vice Chancellor for Student Affairs Amy Johnson refuted the narrative of long wait lists, saying they haven’t had one in 14 years. She said UNC’s access to care is better than other institutions she’s worked at that have wait lists for any type of service.

The wait is about a week for brief and ongoing one on one therapy, Johnson said, but urgent cases, walk-ins and group therapy are always available.

“If you are a student that needs to see someone urgently, who wants to do an intake who feels like group sessions would be a value to them, we are doing all of that today,” Johnson said. “Walk-ins are available every single day for students who need it.”

CAPS also provides psychiatric medication evaluation and management services for students, as well as academic interventions. UNC-CH also recently implemented and staffed a Multicultural Health Program through CAPS that focuses on the needs of Black, Indigenous, and students of color at UNC-Chapel Hill.

How colleges can improve suicide prevention

The UNC System has already started expanding mental health services for students statewide with a $5 million grant from the Governor’s Emergency Education Relief Fund this year. The system plans to use the money to increase training, resources and expertise. The system will extend access to training and services to North Carolina community colleges and private universities.

Campuses are seeing increased concerns and needs among students, but they need to be careful not to attribute it to any one thing, said Marisa Marraccini, assistant professor of school psychology at UNC-CH.

“We want to just point out one thing and say this is the problem, but it’s really complex,” Marraccini said. “It’s important to address the campus and student from a whole campus, whole students lens.”

Staff members need to be monitoring and screening risks and ready to provide support for college students who are struggling immediately, Marraccini said. And there is baseline support that starts before students get to college and throughout college that helps them along the way before they hit a mental health crisis.

Resources need to be used for prevention, targeted intervention and intensive intervention that gives all students access to all of it, Marraccini said.

“I don’t think any one place is doing that perfectly,” Marraccini said.

©2021 The Charlotte Observer. Visit charlotteobserver.com. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.