The University of Wisconsin System Board of Regents will re-examine counseling services on UW campuses after new information about students’ mental health has drawn concern among officials.

An August study from the University of Texas of students on 70 college campuses found more than half had experienced suicidal thinking at one point, and a UW System audit showed increasing need for mental health counseling across the state.

Board of Regents Vice President Chuck Pruitt called the report by the UW System Office of Operations Review and Audit a “wake-up call” for the university.

At their last meeting Aug. 22, the regents set up an advisory committee to further examine possible action on the issue.

According to the UW report, wait times for counseling appointments are typically about a week, but occasionally much longer, and about 9.1 percent of UW-Madison students received counseling services in the year that ended June 30, 2007.

Furthermore, the demand for counseling services is rising, increasing an average of 22 percent in the past four years across UW campuses, while the number of counselors has not increased.

“We cannot just put this aside,” regent Brent Smith said, encouraging the board to make steps to address the issue.

According to the web-based UT-Austin study of more than 26,000 students, more than half of students who experienced a recent suicidal crisis did not seek counseling or other professional help or even tell anyone about their suicidal thoughts.

Furthermore, 6 percent of undergraduates and 4 percent of graduates reported having seriously considered suicide in the last year before taking the survey. About two-thirds of those who consider suicide do so more than once in a 12-month period.

“To reach this segment of the student body, we need to augment the current crisis-focused treatment approach with a more proactive and preventive service paradigm that’s capable of reducing the prevalence of suicidality among college students,” UT-Austin researcher David Drum said in a statement.

Pruitt said recent high-profile crises like those at Virginia Tech and Northern Illinois University also contributed to the regents’ attention to this issue.

“You can’t have incidents like that and have it not be somewhere in the back of your mind. That affects everybody, and I think it dramatizes it not just for people on campuses but also to people in the Legislature and in the administrations,” Pruitt said. “This is really an issue that affects all students in all campuses, beyond just the extreme cases like Virginia Tech and NIU.”

According to UW System President Kevin Reilly, the UW System cannot and should not provide all the resources some students need.

“We cannot do everything with the current resources we have,” Reilly said, “… nonetheless, we should still be asking for some additional resources.”

The audit’s recommendations included increasing availability by using student counseling interns, increasing group therapy and outsourcing certain aspects of counseling services.

“It is a complicated issue, but it is one that we’re pretty committed to working with and wrestling out,” Pruitt said.

–Jacquelyn Ryberg contributed to this report.