Mental Health

 

I want to go to a Yale where students who need quality mental health care can access it quickly and easily, without stigma. Over the past few years, YCC and the student body at large have confronted the fact that there are problems with the way Yale treats mental health. Yalies who need mental health care often have inadequate access to treatment, or, sometimes, do not seek treatment at all because they are afraid of being stigmatized or forced to leave campus. Instead, Yale should be a community where we take care of everyone. The best moment in Michael Herbert’s YCC Presidency was when he directly challenged Dean Holloway to respond to the YCC’s recommendations for mental health and withdrawal reforms. Because of Michael’s advocacy, he did. If I’m elected, I’ll keep pushing for administrators to hear our voices, respond to our needs, and move mental health care at Yale forward.

Yale should:

  • Hire more staff counselors at Yale Mental Health & Counseling in order to decrease wait times for students waiting to be matched with a counselor.

  • Hire more counselors of color, including a dedicated professional for each of the cultural houses.

  • Allow students to schedule Mental Health & Counseling appointments online with all clinicians, after an initial pilot last fall during which only some clinicians used online scheduling. Yale Health should also provide students the option to discuss their treatment with their counselor over email, if they would prefer to communicate through that medium.

  • Clarify its involuntary medical leave policies. Students deserve to know under what circumstances they may be required to leave campus, and no student should feel the need to lie about the severity of their symptoms out of a fear that they might be sent home.

  • Refund the remainder of a semester’s tuition, on a prorated basis, when students are required to take medical leave mid-semester.

  • Extend the deadline for students to take a voluntary leave of absence (i.e. without having to apply for reinstatement) from the end of shopping period until midterm.

  • Allow students taking time away from Yale for non-disciplinary reasons to petition for access to career services, library resources, and fellowship funding.

What YCC Can Do:

  • Advocate forcefully to administrators for the above changes. YCC has no formal decision-making power on these issues, but we have the ability and the responsibility to make student needs and concerns clear to the administration.

 

  • Evaluate the new “Wellness Champions” initiative, which trains students to be advocates for health and wellness at Yale. Determine how well the program is working, and whether the initiative requires greater student input to best serve the student body.

  • Collaborate with Yale Mental Health & Counseling and the YCC Events Committee to host events during exam periods that will reduce exam-related anxiety.