Mental health overload

The subject of healthy minds has been in the general consciousness at Chico State recently as a variety of topics were explored during the campus’ Mental Health Matters Week (which ends today, Feb. 26), and appropriately so, since more students than ever are seeking help for mental health issues.

The week of workshops was sponsored by the Chico State Counseling Center and the local chapter of the California Faculty Association (CFA). While discussions ranged from racism’s impact on mental health to free local resources available to those in need, there’s another issue simmering under the surface.

For years, the CFA has maintained that most of the 23 schools in the California State University system are underserving their students by not addressing staffing shortages at on-campus counseling centers. That includes Chico State, where at least one longtime counselor says she believes that the university isn’t doing the best it can for students with mental health needs.

Mimi Bommersbach, who retired last summer after 13 years as a counselor and interim director of the Counseling Center, is currently working there on a part-time basis. She says the center has long been short-staffed in the face of an increasingly heavy influx of students, many of whom have to wait weeks between appointments as a result.

“You lose that connection to the student,” she said, “and they might stop seeking the service.”

Use of the Counseling Center has steadily trended upward in recent years. Chico State students made nearly as many counseling appointments last semester (2,446) as in the entirety of the 2009-10 school year (2,766).

Dr. Deborah Stewart, the university Student Health Service medical chief of staff, said that the phenomenon is widespread.

“Throughout the [CSU] system, and, in fact, all over the country, counseling centers are seeing an increase in need for acute services, walk-in services and individual counseling services,” she said. “It’s stressing and straining all of the counseling and wellness centers in the system. There is no question about that.”

Bommersbach says university administration has dragged its feet on adding counselors to meet the demand, and she has doggedly advocated for three more full-time positions. Pedro Douglas, associate vice president for student affairs, says the university will soon open a search for two new counselors, as well as an associate director.

“The two counseling positions, we want to get them on as soon as possible,” he said. “Hopefully, they’ll be here by the start of the next fall semester.”

While Bommersbach is “thrilled” with that development, she says that the looming retirements of one full-time and two part-time counselors—including herself—means the department won’t have a net gain. (Currently, the center employs seven full-time and two part-time counselors.)

Furthermore, the soon-to-be-posted openings will be for nontenured positions, Douglas said. Without the job security offered by tenure, Bommersbach has concerns about the potential applicants’ depth and breadth of experience.

“Why not have the most experienced and qualified candidates?” she asked.

That on-campus counseling centers should be staffed by tenure-track faculty is a stance of the CFA, as well. A resolution released by the union in 2013 argues that counseling and psychotherapy services are “best provided by a stable, established and consistent staff of professionals well known to other faculty and administrators and integrated into the fabric of the community.”

Chico State administrators disagree on both counts—that high-quality candidates are best attracted by offering tenure-track positions, and that tenured faculty provide the best services to students. Douglas said Chico State employs a mix of tenured and nontenured positions, and the optimal balance is struck when tenured faculty mostly handle duties such as grant-writing and research.

“The argument for tenured faculty doesn’t really work in the Counseling Center,” Stewart said. “It doesn’t fit when the need is for more counselors seeing students—not for counselors writing grants. That’s the view of administration here.”

Stewart added that Chico State employs “really excellent” counselors who aren’t tenured.

Bommersbach, meanwhile, has become greatly discouraged by the situation and is leaning toward entering full retirement after this semester.

“It just doesn’t seem doable anymore,” she said, “because we’re stretched so thin.”