Mental health ranks as top student concern in presidential search report

Tim Tai, Senior Photographer

Student mental health is the top challenge Yale’s 24th president will face, according to a report by the Presidential Search Committee’s Student Advisory Council, or SAC.

The report, which the News obtained in late January, summarized data from over 1,800 student respondents in a survey focused on student concerns for the next president of Yale. 

The SAC was created after widespread student demand for student representation on the Presidential Search Committee and included 15 students from across the University. Forty percent of respondents to the SAC’s survey listed student mental health as the top challenge the University will face, and 38 percent listed mental health policy as an issue where the University performed worse than peer institutions. 

Student mental health care policy has been a point of contention for students in recent years, particularly the policy for students facing mental health challenges who want to take leave. In September, Yale settled a class-action lawsuit which was filed by mental health advocacy group Elis for Rachael and current students against the University in November 2022. In January 2023, in the midst of the suit, the University announced “momentous” changes to leave of absence policies. 

University President Peter Salovey said that the president does have much power over mental health policy. Instead, he said these policies usually fall to Vice President for University Life Kimberly Goff Crews or deans. 

“[Presidents] don’t make policy for services and generally and for issues affecting students,” University President Peter Salovey told the News. “Having said that, I’m a clinical psychologist who still has a license to practice — though I don’t practice — so student mental health is hugely important to me.”

However, Salovey said that Yale’s president can still influence mental health policy through three avenues. Namely, they can “give voice to the challenge” to raise awareness about the issue of mental health, raise funds to “support a more robust mental health strategy” and weigh in on policy decisions that are under consideration.

He added, for example, that the University’s expansion of its mental health resources to residential colleges through the Yale College Community Care, or YC3, program was a change for which he long advocated.

“Long before it was implemented, I was a very strong proponent of decentralizing mental health services and reducing the barriers in order to make it easy for students to access it,” Salovey said. “What became called YC3 is consistent with a point of view about how to deliver psychological care on campus that I’ve long championed.”

YC3 was established in April 2021 to provide short-term mental health care in the residential colleges with wellness specialists and clinicians associated with YMHC. In 2022, some students spoke of positive experiences with the organization, while others told the News that the short-term nature made it difficult to use for mental health care. 

Among the most challenging aspects of being Yale’s president are the changing needs of students, Salovey told the News in September. 

Salovey told the News in November that students today — and their parents — have different “expectations” of the University that involve institutions “being far more intentional about developing students.” This shift in expectations, he said, necessitates that universities respond with a multitude of services.

“When I was in college, the student attitude about many, many things with respect to the institution could be summarized in the following sentence: ‘leave us alone’ …  my generation for whatever reason as young adults was focused on autonomy,” Salovey said. “As a psychologist, I love that the stigma around getting help for psychological issues like anxiety or depression seems to largely be gone and students want that help … but it does change the demand and the nature of how a university responds to that demand.”

Chief of Yale Mental Health and Counseling Paul Hoffman attributed the large student concerns to students going through the COVID-19 pandemic, the political climate and influence of social media, all of which he said have taken a toll on students’ mental health. He said that rates of students in therapy nationally have risen from 13 to 36 percent, and the rate of students taking medications for mental health have increased from 12 to 29 percent.            

Yale, Salovey said, “is moving aggressively” to expand mental healthcare but is not “100 percent there yet.” 

In addition to the leave policy, concerns around mental health policy have also centered around long wait times and the YC3 program’s branding as being “short-term.”

Prior to the lawsuit regarding leave policies, in April 2022, the University relaxed the coursework and interview requirements for reinstatement following leave. The 2023 policy changed the process of taking leave for mental health reasons from a “withdrawal” to “medical leave of absence,” which now allows  students who take time off to have benefits like health care coverage through Yale Undergraduate Affiliate Coverage and the ability to work student jobs. Students are now also able to enroll in two course credits at the start of the term or drop down to two course credits with urgent medical and mental health needs. 

Despite these changes, Ben Swinchoski ’25, co-director of the Yale Student Mental Health Association, told the News that there are still some concerns about access to mental health care. Swinchoski described mental health care as “a lot better post settlement,” but raised concerns about wait times students face at Yale Mental Health and Counseling.  

“I think there are still some issues that persist,” Swinchoski said. “There’s a lot of variability in the wait time and also in the quality and consistency of care that people get.”

Swinchoski described hearing student concerns about wait times for the intake process, or the time until the initial appointment, as well as the time it takes to get matched with a therapist post-intake. Swinchoski said that the main role he sees the University president in helping this issue is raising funds for more clinicians at YMHC. 

Chief of Yale Mental Health and Counseling Paul Hoffman said that YMHC has expanded over the past four years, increasing the number of clinicians from 34 to 73 as well as partnering with Yale College to create the YC3 program. Hoffman added that YMHC has the largest staff of any school of equivalent size and one of the largest staffs of any college mental health center in the country. Additionally, YMHC has partnered with Yale’s graduate and professional schools to create counseling programs in eight schools and opened two additional locations — 205 Whitney Ave. and 60 Temple St. 

“This extensive growth has led to significantly reduced wait times both for initial appointments as well as the time to get matched to a therapist,” Hoffman wrote to the News. 

Yale Mental Health and Counseling is located at 55 Lock Street.