Mental health services
Of the many students dealing with mental illnesses at the University of Maryland, I am one of the lucky ones. I struggled with an eating disorder during my freshman year, but I was able to use the counseling and health centers to my advantage. I found a support group and a therapist at the Counseling Center who worked with me to improve my situation.
Unfortunately though, the yearly eight-session limit this university imposes due to its lack of resources wasn’t enough for me to recover from this eating disorder. After building rapport with my therapist, I was cut off, like so many other students I know. I began — and continue to this day — to have phone sessions with my therapist to remain mentally healthy.
I am one of the lucky ones, though. I got enough from the mental health services that I did not need to drop out of school and seek more advanced treatment. But not everyone is as lucky.
Anorexia has the highest mortality rate of all mental illnesses. Yes, that means eating disorders lead to more deaths each year than depression does, yet many people dealing with eating disorders tend not to describe themselves as actively suicidal. It is both commendable and necessary that the counseling and health centers are prioritizing actively suicidal students. However, it’s alarming and sad that they are not also prioritizing the deadliest mental illness, anorexia, because they do not have the resources to do so.
Although I have recovered from my mental illness, it still guts me to know that others on the campus won’t be able to have the same opportunity for recovery that I received. I want to echo the importance of Taylor Swaak’s article “The Waiting Game” and the staff editorial “Increase funds for mental health,” as well as advocate a continued conversation regarding mental health on the campus.
We go to a school that is willing to spend millions of our dollars on sports or new buildings but cuts spending on perhaps the most important thing of all: the mental health and well-being of students. Students are often at the most volatile times in their lives when dealing with mental illnesses. Allocating resources to programs that help and hiring extra counselors and mental health professionals should be a given, not an afterthought. While on-campus programs such as Terps After Dark are nice, they are no substitute for hiring real mental health professionals and having varied mental health services on the campus.
This is why Project HEAL UMD, a group that promotes positive body image on the campus and raises money for eating disorder treatment scholarships is pledging to do anything in our power to lobby for more effective and appropriate treatments of mental health on this campus. This includes supporting budget increases for the Counseling Center and mental health programs at the University Health Center. It also involves pushing for the three vacant spots at the counseling center to be filled, especially after two mental health professionals who focused on eating disorders stopped working in August. Finally, it means letting our voices — the voices of those recovered from eating disorders, of their allies and of those advocating mental health awareness in general — to be heard by refusing to let stigma keep us quiet about mental illness.
