On the edge of the Syracuse University campus, four blocks from the Quad, on Walnut Place, is a nondescript, mustard-colored house with a wide porch and worn gray steps.

A former fraternity house, students now know it, if they know it at all, as the Counseling Center. Each year, nearly 2,000 students walk through its door to speak to any of the center’s 17 counselors.

One of those students is Jasmine Taylor. A sophomore psychology major, Taylor transferred to SU last fall from Emerson College, a 3,700-student school in Boston about half an hour away from where she grew up.

“I come here, it’s out of state, it’s like five hours from Boston and this school is gigantic by comparison,” Taylor said. “I remember coming here and being kind of panicky and blown away that I would be living on a part of campus (Skyhalls) completely separate from where all the classes are.”

As she transitioned to life at SU, she started to struggle with anxiety and depression. In October, she went to the Counseling Center and saw someone weekly for the rest of the semester. Since then, Taylor said she’s found her place on campus and hasn’t needed to go back to the center this semester.

But many others have. Student use of the Counseling Center has skyrocketed recently, with the number of in-person appointments increasing about 66 percent in the last five years. The center has already had about 750 more appointments this school year than all of last year.

As the Counseling Center has attempted to adapt to the increase, students have criticized the center for its long wait times, triage system and focus on short-term counseling.

Counseling Center director Cory Wallack said the staff has worked hard to reduce the wait time and the short-term approach remains necessary because of high demand. But both administrators and students agree the center needs more resources to properly help students and that there needs to be a university-wide conversation about mental health.

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Walking into the Counseling Center can feel more like entering someone’s house than a university office, which of course is exactly the point.

To the left, a grand wooden staircase, a reminder of the house’s 19th-century origins, leads to the counseling offices upstairs. To the right is a waiting room, where soft music plays and comfortable chairs surround tables with boxes of tissues.

Put simply, the Counseling Center’s goal this semester was to make sure students spend more time upstairs than downstairs.

Last fall, which Wallack called the busiest semester ever, the wait time for an appointment after the initial telephone evaluation peaked at 11 days, Wallack said.

The wait time is now only two days, which the center achieved mainly by expanding its group therapy program and by trying to see students faster. Group therapy was expanded because more students were coming in with anxiety and research shows that treating these students in a group setting works well, Wallack said.

Hiring more counselors would also help with the wait time. The Counseling Center’s current ratio of students to counselors is about one counselor to 1,400 students, Wallack said, within the center’s required accreditation range. But Wallack said he would like to hire four or five more counselors to further decrease the ratio.

During the last five years, the center has had an increase of two counselors. Prior to that, the last staffing increase was in 2008, Wallack said.

The high demand also means the center has to use a triage system, which was implemented in 2011, to prioritize students with the most pressing needs. As part of the system, counselors conduct a telephone assessment, usually within 24-hours of a student’s call. Sometimes this leads to a student being directed to another campus office where their needs could be better met, Wallack said.

Still, Wallack acknowledges the system is often unpopular with students.

“I think for some students that’s a concern and they feel like they have to call and say they’re thinking about suicide or they’re not going to be seen as quickly,” he said. “I can tell you that’s not even close to true.”

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The house on Walnut Place is the beginning of most students’ experience with mental health services but for some students, it’s not the end.

The Counseling Center provides only short-term counseling, Wallack said, and generally won’t commit to seeing someone on a weekly basis. No official session limit exists but most students who use the services are seen five to seven times during an academic year, he added.

But for students with more serious mental health concerns, or those who want weekly counseling, finding help outside the center can often be a confusing or frustrating experience.

Mali Golomb-Leavitt, a senior psychology major and president of Active Minds, has been to the Counseling Center twice during her time at SU because she was struggling with depression. Both times she was referred to a psychologist located downtown. With no car, the only way Golomb-Leavitt could get there was by walking or taking the bus, she said.

When she was referred her freshman year, she didn’t even try to get downtown. She was referred out again last semester and this time she went to nonemergency medical transport to see if they would take her.

Golomb-Leavitt was turned away because she didn’t have a physical health complaint. She tried walking downtown but stopped after a few appointments because it took too long.

Despite her experience, Golomb-Leavitt doesn’t blame the Counseling Center staff and said she believes they’re trying their best to help students despite limited resources. But she thinks the center could be more transparent about what services are offered and to whom.

“This is already a huge battle that we’re fighting by even stepping into the Counseling Center just societally, battling that stigma,” Golomb-Leavitt said. “So we shouldn’t have to battle any further than that.”

Only about 10 percent of students who visit the center are referred to outside resources, Wallack said. The most common referrals are to the Couple and Family Therapy Center and Psychological Services Center, which are both staffed by graduate students.

The Couple and Family Therapy Center doesn’t charge for therapy sessions and Psychological Services uses a sliding scale. Students who don’t have health insurance are never referred to outside places, Wallack noted.

SU doesn’t provide transportation for students who are referred out but tries to send them to resources nearby such as Psychological Services, located in Huntington Hall, he said.

SU does have caseworkers, housed in the Office of Student Assistance, who can help students navigate these different options, said Sarah Solomon, director of the Office of Student Assistance.

The office receives referrals from many offices on campus including the Counseling Center and Solomon said the need has increased in the past few years. The office currently has two caseworkers and while Solomon doesn’t have an ideal number of caseworkers in mind, “two is not going to do it,” she said.

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One street west of the Counseling Center is Marshall Street, where five bars sit within blocks of each other. One block north are the Castle Court apartments, where parties were famously banned last semester. And surrounding the center on all sides are fraternity and sorority houses.

The Princeton Review named SU the nation’s top party school last August, and beyond the images of Mayfest keg stands and beer pong is a darker side. Substance abuse is one of the top reasons students come to the Counseling Center and often goes hand in hand with mental health problems, Wallack said.

That’s why prevention programs, such as the BE Wise campaign, play an important role in helping students before they find themselves in the Counseling Center, said Katelyn Cowen, director of the Office of Health Promotion.

The office is currently working to launch the pilot version of a holistic stress reduction center this summer with a full launch next fall, Cowen said.

Once the center is up and running, students will be able to receive help with sleep patterns and access mindfulness videos, yoga mats and meditation cushions. The center will also have biofeedback software, which helps people become more aware of the physical effects of stress on the body, Cowen said.

But beyond the resources SU can offer, there also needs to be an overall change in the mental health landscape at SU, a change that goes beyond just drinking less and finding better ways to cope with stress, Wallack said.

“So much of what we hear from the thousands of students who come in (to the Counseling Center) is a lot of conversation about feeling lonely, a lot of conversation about feeling how they don’t have connections,” he said. “So I’m constantly wondering about the social fabric of our campus and what that does and doesn’t do to contribute to isolation, anxiety and depression, (and) sexual assault.

“At the end of the day it’s a bigger task than 17 people in this building can tackle.”

Published on April 21, 2015 at 11:30 pm

Contact Jessica: jliannet@syr.edu | @JessicaIannetta