By The Beacon Editorial Board
The University's Health Center is a comforting luxury: Students pay nothing out of pocket for their visits and prescription medicine is readily available.
For many students, the Health Center is their primary care provider. However, it is struggling to fill the needs of University students.
On average, 25 to 30 students visit the Health Center every day for mental health-related issues, while nearly 40 students have appointments for physical health issues.
Each day, Monday through Friday, the Health Center has one time slot reserved for a student experiencing a mental health emergency. This year, that opening has been filled almost every day. According to Paul Myers, the director of the Health Center, this issue does not stem from an increase in mental health problems but simply because there are more students at enrolled at the University.
Since 2002, enrollment at the University for fulltime undergraduate students has risen by 700 students. Currently, 3,300 fulltime undergraduate students are enrolled.
If the University is going to continue to expand at its current rate, it should increase the staff at the Health Center commensurately. The Health Center is staffed with three fulltime psychologists, two nurse practitioners, a fulltime licensed social worker, a graduate student from Pacific University in training for a doctorate in psychology, a part-time nutritionist, a psychiatric nurse practitioner and a registered nurse. That's not enough.
The moral of the story: the Health Center needs more funding.
Last winter, the University of California, Los Angeles published a survey on U.S. college freshmen, rating their emotional health at an all-time low. A big factor to the dip in emotional health was the economic pressure on students. This pressure only adds to the stress students feel from their parents, teachers and society at large.
Mental health should be taken seriously. It is important for students to be proactive about their physical, emotional and mental wellbeing. But when the Health Center is constantly booked, this is no easy task. Making an appointment at the Health Center becomes even more difficult when Health Center employees have limited hours in which they are available.
It should be noted, Health Center employees work hard to serve students – there are simply not enough of them. Myers not only takes care of the massive administrative work required as the director of the Health Center, he also treats students in his capacity as a licensed psychologist. The Beacon commends the Health Center for trying to keep up with the demand and looking into cost-effective ways to serve more students. Now, the University needs to step up and put a plan into place.
The Health Center should have more than one emergency slot each day. We are a small campus, but sometimes more than one person will have an emergency on a given day.
Many students are also concerned about the Health Center being booked when they need to be seen for a physical health issue. Often, it takes more than a week to get an appointment. For students with cars, it is not a problem to drive to the nearest ZoomCare. However, for students without cars, this tends to be a big problem and takes twice the amount of time. A visit to ZoomCare can also cost you a hefty sum out of pocket. This is time and money that students do not have.
The more students the Health Center can help, the better. Both the student body and the University will benefit with higher retention rates and happier, healthy students.
