OSU Counseling Proposal

673 Words2 Pages

Introduction
The purpose of this proposal is to describe, in detail, the reasons for why the campus needs to adjust how they handle taking on new clients who need counseling. In the following report, we aim to explain why insufficient student access to OSU Counseling Services is a problem on campus and delineate our planned methods to research the contributing factors in this issue with the goal of identifying one or more plausible solutions to this problem. Addressing the problem of access to mental health services on campus is of vital importance, because mental illnesses tend to arise during the period of neurological development that heavily corresponds to the age of most college students, and inadequate mental health care can reduce retention rate and lower overall student satisfaction, and adequate mental health care has been associated with improved educational and professional outcomes. Oklahoma as a whole is ranked forty-ninth in adult mental health care services …show more content…

With numbers, so low in mental health services, and many people who are diagnosed with a mental illness are college aged, we are seeing how important it is that our campus needs to improve (Jones, 2013, p 6). Furthermore, students with serious mental health disturbances, who do not receive care, can pose a potential risk to themselves and sometimes others. Studies have shown mental illnesses left untreated can lead to self-harm, and other forms of violence (Skegg, 2005, 1471; Stuart. 2003, 122). With young ages of onset, colleges try to prepare to help, but with long waitlists, students are unable to receive the help they need. Each semester, the OSU Student Counseling Center has a waiting list that is over fifty students long (Norman, 2016). This means that students who are new clients seeking mental health care are waiting months to receive the

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