Mental Health Crisis on JMU’s Campus in Motion to be Solved by SGA
After multiple tragedies taking place on JMU’s campus this year, the push towards bettering the care of student’s mental health on campus has taken a front-row seat in the minds of many students, including the Student Government Association.
Shawdee Bakhtiari, JMU’s next student body president, based her recent campaign on focusing on student’s mental health and mental health resources on campus. There has been controversy over the Counseling Center being overfilled, and not enough resources allocated to the students. “First and foremost, mental health is constantly thrown on a back burner in today’s society, and in college many students suffer from mental health issues and acknowledging it is the first step to fixing the problem,” Bakhtiari said.
The SGA created a bill of opinion in February of this year asking for student signatures “demanding greater mental health resources for student, faculty, and staff,” according to JMU SGA’s Twitter post. After roughly 4000 signatures, the bill was unanimously passed at the SGA senate meeting on Feb. 15, said Bakhtiari.
“When around 20% of your student body signs a bill demanding better health resources on campus, JMU has to listen,” Bakhtiari said.
The counseling center can only provide a certain number of appointments to struggling students and then after, students must find their own accommodations in the Harrisonburg community afterward, said Carlin McNeil Bumgarner, JMU’s next student body vice president. Even with this, resources become overwhelmed both at the counseling center and at mental health community centers.
Not all blame can be attributed to the counseling center for lack of resources Bumgarner said. The school should be first held accountable for lack of funding, and not the people who are working in the counseling center. Lack of appointments, services, and time falls onto the school’s responsibility.
“One of the mental health bills we passed in the student senate as a resolution this year, we were asking for more funding to go towards things such as telehealth counseling,” Bumgarner said. “Those are obviously expensive, and not everyone can come into the counseling office.”
Telehealth therapy is counseling services that administer fully online counseling support, counseling sessions, and psychiatry according to a statement on “Student Affairs Mental Health and Wellness Initiatives” sent out by Tim Miller, VP of Student Affairs.
“We expect a set of services like this will cost upwards of $800,000 annually and we are working now on identifying the funds for this effort,” Miller stated.
This process has been streamlined after the tragedies of multiple suicides that have taken place on JMU’s campus. President Jonathan Alger sent out an email acknowledging the death of a JMU student stating, “the loss of one of our students from last week,” on Feb. 7.
Many students felt that this was not enough according to Becca Stehle, JMU sophomore.
“I think in any community there is always more to be done, I don’t think [the JMU community] has hit a point where we can say, ‘yeah we have done everything that we could’,” Stehle said.
With the SGA initiative on improving mental health resources, change is in the making. Students should feel more hopeful that the campus will listen to their calls for help and with the school’s support behind the SGA, next year will “hopefully show the students real change in the counseling center,” Bakhtiari said.
“I think in my four years of being a student here, that it appears that [JMU] is trying to make things about mental health more accessible, but I don’t that they are, to be honest,” Bridget Gooley, senior JMU student said. “I think in the recent tragedies that have occurred on campus; I think I’ve seen my peers more on edge.”
Students hope that with the new student body executives, and with administration support, next year the mental health resources and support have the potential to be better Gooley said. There is still a lot of skepticism surrounding the subject around the allocation of mental health resources, even with the SGA’s motion to improve the counseling center.
“Generally, it’s hard for students to make a change at a university level which is disappointing, but it is nice to know that students are advocating for better mental health resources, accessibility, trying to make the university better in any way they can,” Gooley said.
