Colin Tidwell’s first experience with depression came during his sophomore year at the UA. The California native was beginning to sink his roots in Tucson. But family circumstances threatened to pull him back home.
He remembered the feelings. Like he was stuck in an impossible situation. Like he couldn’t do anything right. So he reached out to the University of Arizona’s Counseling and Psychiatric Services, or CAPS, for help.
“That was the point at which I realized that there is always support,” said Tidwell, now a UA senior.
At the UA — and colleges across the country — counselors have been inundated by an increase in demand for mental health services. And they’re expecting that to continue.
The UA’s CAPS found that the number of total students who sought counseling jumped 9% from the 2017-2018 to the 2018-2019 school years. The number of visits from students seeking same-day crisis counseling during the same period was up 30%.
“We’ve definitely seen the rise here this semester,” Marian Binder, CAPS director, said in November. “We’ve seen it not only in terms of counseling center utilization, but I think if you talk to other campus partners, you’ll see that they’ve seen it in the Dean of Students Office and in Housing and Residence Life as far as behavioral issues.”
Binder said the why remains unclear.
There’s the obvious technological aspect, as students are expected to be plugged in to their coursework 24/7 and turn in assignments, sometimes as late as midnight. Then there’s the social aspect, where students are constantly connecting with people on social media. And the political, cultural, social and socioeconomic impacts in the lives of the students, many of whom come from diverse backgrounds.
“There are a lot of factors that may contribute to why people are not managing as well,” Binder said. “But I don’t think there’s one thing that we can point to and say it’s because of this. ... And everyone is always looking for that one explanation.”
There is one aspect of mental health counseling that has decreased: the stigma.
“We know people are more willing to seek out help,” said David Salafsky, interim co-executive director of Campus Health Service. “And that’s been a really positive thing.”
Both Binder and Salafsky chalked that up to awareness campaigns, which included simple things like putting the suicide hotline number on signs atop the campus parking structures or encouraging campus members to report concerns.
“I think we’re seeing a lot more people stepping up to report a concern,” Binder said. “Part of that’s the lack of stigma, part of that’s the awareness that maybe there’s a problem, and part of that’s maybe bystander intervention — I should maybe do something about it, rather than wait. So those are all, I think, public health education factors that aren’t specifically about mental health, but they 100% impact how people identify and deal with it.”
Tidwell has parlayed his experiences into helping others. As a resident assistant at an on-campus dorm, he became a witness to the mental health problems other students were facing.
In particular, Tidwell worked closely with residents who were part of the LGBT community. He said that while all students experience different levels of mental health, he saw the ways in which people of sexual and gender minorities were more affected by some of these issues.
“College is for most people the first very defining moment of independence,” he said. “For me, when I talk about pressure of being successful, that was the first time that I realized that my mental (health) was a big part of myself.”
Tidwell, a psychology major, also serves as the president of Active Minds, a campus organization that aims to destigmatize mental illness.
There, he works with Christina Mendoza, a UA junior and Active Minds vice president. She said her feelings of depression and anxiety started in eighth grade.
“I come from a Hispanic family and a Catholic family. Mental health? Not a thing. Mental illness? Not a thing. It’s definitely not talked about openly,” she said.
Mendoza said getting involved with Active Minds helped her finally be able to come to terms with her own mental health.
“This environment has given me an open space to deal with it and realize that there’s a bunch of people who are feeling the exact same way that I can communicate and talk to,” she said
Tidwell and Mendoza have each taken advantage of the campus mental health resources through CAPS. They both said their experience with CAPS was mostly positive and that their counselors connected them with great outside resources. However, they also said it takes some time to get an appointment because the counseling services have more students than it can serve.
Binder, the director of CAPS, acknowledged that the counseling service is working on expanding its staff but is also looking to make other changes in the department, including diversifying the staff to be more representative of the students it serves. CAPS also is looking to diversify treatment, experimenting with group counseling or meditation, in addition to just providing one-hour counseling.
“I don’t want to say we’re trying to get away from that, because that’s always going to be a very main need,” Binder said. “But we really think there’s major space to expand on it and not dilute the help you’re giving people but actually to help more people.”
Some of those efforts are being taken at the newly opened CAPS North facility in the recreation center at the Honors College.
“I think we’re pretty unique and having that shared space where a counseling office that’s embedded within a Campus Recreation facility, and we’re excited about finding ways to partner with them because we know physical activity is probably one of the most powerful things we can do to increase not only your physical health, but also your mental health,” Salafsky said.
Taking all aspects of mental health into consideration is also a big goal for CAPS officials. So often, they said, people try to define mental health as a single issue, but it’s actually expansive.
“I think it’s also important to look at the fact that mental health is a very large umbrella. You know, it ranges the gamut from stress, which is a normal part of life, not to mention college, all the way to people with serious mental illness, psychotic symptoms, suicidality, certainly, people who can barely function in the world because of their symptoms, substance abuse, which falls into that category as well.”
Tidwell hopes to continue to spread awareness for mental health at the UA and help other students become more comfortable with seeking out resources.
“At the end of the day, seeing a therapist shouldn’t be much more of a big deal than getting a physical,” Tidwell said.
“College is for most people
the first very defining moment
of independence. ... I realized
that my mental (health) was
a big part of myself.” Colin Tidwell, senior at the University of Arizona
