College Student Preferences for Campus Mental Health Services and Practices

ABSTRACT

The decline in college student mental health has been articulated by counseling center directors and administrators in higher education and has been thoroughly documented by research. Counseling centers have responded with diverse functions and services to holistically address the emotional and behavioral health needs of students. Beyond clinical services, counseling centers have developed services involving comprehensive prevention/outreach, case management, consultation, and collaboration. The question remains: how do students view the importance of such services and functions? The present study addresses this question as follow-up to past research and data that have illuminated the comprehensive nature of campus counseling center services. Findings in this study indicate that students who used campus counseling services, as well as students-in-general, agreed with the importance of the full range of comprehensive counseling center services. Specific responses to service preferences were also investigated (e.g. 24–7 Helpline, counseling services should be free to students).

KEYWORDS:

• College counseling
• college counseling center services
• college student mental health
• college student mental health preferences
• comprehensive counseling center

Acknowledgments

The authors would like to sincerely thank the following counseling center leaders for their time and effort in collecting student data from their respective universities: Vivian Barnette Ph.D. from North Carolina Agricultural and Technical University, Jocelyn Buhain Ph.D. from University of Central Florida, Andrew Miller Ph.D. from Sam Houston State University, David Onestak Ph.D. from James Madison University, Gregory Stevens Ph.D. from Kennesaw State University and Scott Strader Ph.D. from University of South Florida. Finally, any research project requires an organized, detail-oriented production specialist. We were fortunate to have Ms. Carolyn Pelotte serve that role.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).