Transferring to UW-Madison can be a stressful ordeal, but assimilating into Badger red when all you feel is blue is especially tough.
UW-Madison senior ""Michelle,"" who, along with the other students quoted below, chose to remain anonymous because of privacy concerns, knows all about that. Two years ago, she came to UW-Madison as a junior looking for a fresh start after dropping out of an East Coast university because of chronic depression that led to a suicide attempt. She soon turned to University Health Services for anxiety counseling, where she met with a therapist throughout her first semester.
Last year, about 10 percent of UW-Madison students sought treatment from UHS' Mental Health Clinic for a total of at least 17,000 sessions in 2008, according to UHS Executive Director Sarah Van Orman. That's at least 46 visits per day.
Michelle's UHS therapist helped her ease the transition, but Michelle knew it couldn't last. By semester's end, she was forced to find a new therapist because of a UHS policy that requires students be sent to outside providers after 10 sessions in a year or 20 in their college career, and exceptions are rare.
""The demand for sessions and services has been increasing ... so instead of serving fewer students with very long-term care, we want to serve more students with shorter-term care,"" Van Orman said.
Session limits vary across Big Ten schools, with six sessions offered at Purdue, 25 at Ohio State and 10 at Minnesota, but Van Orman said the policy satisfies about 90 percent of students looking for therapy.
UHS has 31 counselors, or one for every 1,290 students, though many aren't full-time and only seven prescribe medication. UHS' current budget for mental health, Van Orman said, is between $3 and $4 million.
Michelle is concerned more students are being deterred.
""A lot of my problems came because I was bouncing between eight doctors and 12 therapists,"" she said. ""I was continuing to get worse until I was hospitalized that semester and had to drop all but one class, then left school for treatment.""
Madison has many mental-health options, but students don't enjoy the same exemptions from deductibles and other expenses as they do at UHS.
""As a student, coming up each week with 20 percent of the $150 fee or something like that ... a lot of students say, ‘Forget it,'"" Michelle said.
""Nicole,"" a UW-Madison law student, had just bought insurance through UHS when she found out her ADHD-fueled anxiety would need outside treatment since it couldn't be cared for in 10 sessions.
""It was the worst possible timing, because I went in when I was anxious about money in particular,"" she said. ""So to be told the $600 I paid wasn't going to solve my problems, that they weren't even going to help me and I had to pay another $250 to see somebody outside plus another 20 percent after I finished paying that deductible ... I'm flabbergasted.""
Nicole was also frustrated because, though she had evidence diagnosing her with ADHD since grade school, UHS psychiatrists refused to prescribe her Adderall because, she said, they want to make sure students aren't abusing or selling the drug.
""They said they needed to look into school records and my whole history,"" she said. ""I mean, I graduated top-5 percent of my class undergrad ... That's not going to show them anything.""
""We see a lot of students with attention deficit, and we do prescribe a lot of stimulants,"" Van Orman said, adding they also ""follow a very structured process for making sure we've correctly established the diagnosis.""
Van Orman stressed that UHS' nationally accredited mental-health services, while imperfect, provide many options for students, which UW-Madison senior ""Danielle"" said she appreciated when she sought counseling earlier this year.
""I really like their variety of options,"" she said. ""I currently attend yoga classes to deal with anxiety, and I know they also have meditation classes and support groups.""
Students can call 265-5600 for counseling services and can press ‘9' for the mental crisis hotline.
