Students seeking mental health services can now look to a new guide released on Tuesday for ways to find help and learn more about their legal rights.
The guide, “Campus Mental Health: Know Your Rights!” covers a broad scope of problems mental health patients might encounter, including privacy rights, academic accommodations and going to a psychiatric hospital.
“A number of students are afraid. This guide tries to reassure students that it is OK to seek treatments,” said Lee Carty, director for the Bazelon Center for Mental Health Law in Washington D.C. “You shouldn’t just sit around not talking to your friends or not talking to anybody.”
According to Carty, members of the Leadership 21 Committee at the Bazelon Center drafted different sections of the guide based on their personal experiences with mental health issues.
“They undertook this as a project because they know that the major problems of mental health issues are on college campuses,” Carty said.
Robert McGrath, director of counseling and consultation services at University Health Services, said depression is the No. 1 problem students seek help for, with anxiety-related issues close behind.
According to McGrath, the demand for counseling services at UHS has risen considerably over the past few years.
“I would like to think that stuff like [the guide] can be helpful, but that we’re already being really helpful too,” McGrath said. “However, there is a challenge in the services we do provide because there is great demand.”
When the Bazelon Center started receiving feedback from students who were being banned from campus for seeking mental health treatment, they decided it was necessary to file lawsuits. These lawsuits were a major building block to increase research capacity for the guide, Carty said.
One case included a male student from George Washington University who was asked to leave school after admitting himself to the university hospital for depression. Another case involved a female student from Hunter College, located in New York City, who was locked out of her dorm and asked to leave after attempting suicide, Carty said.
“That is an extreme example of the overreaction,” McGrath said. “If someone is depressed on campus, they’re out of here? That is not a healthy action on the part of the university.”
Carty said both of the cases settled, and as a result, both universities agreed to revise their policies for dealing with students with mental health issues. Additionally, the Bazelon Center has also developed a “model policy” for institutions addressing these issues.
According to McGrath, the University of Wisconsin has not had any lawsuit issues similar to those at George Washington University or Hunter College.
“In my 18 years of working here, UHS has not had any kind of lawsuit,” McGrath said.
UHS’s mental health policy informs students of their legal rights to privacy and confidentiality when students are initially reviewed for consulting services, but UHS does not provide a guide similar to the one printed by the Bazelon Center, McGrath said.
