What are the mental health services like at Yale?
Do a lot of students at Yale utilize them? Are they viewed negatively?
http://yaledailynews.com/?s=mental+health
You can find quite a few articles if you search for “mental health” on the Yale Daily News site. There have been criticisms.
I personally have had a really positive experience with Mental Health and Counseling. When I decided that I might benefit from talking to someone, I called and made an appointment for the following week (my need wasn’t urgent so I didn’t take one of the reserved need-to-be-seen-ASAP appointments that they keep in the calendar). I say a provider for my evaluation, decided I didn’t really click with her and then switched with one simple call. Yale Health offers a number of resources which meet a range of needs that students have, however it isn’t the right choice for all students. There are dozens of therapists in New Haven close to campus and I have friends taking advantage of the opportunity to see them instead.
Here at Yale, I think people are really willing to talk about mental health. It’s not that I stand on rooftops screaming “I’m in counseling,” but I’m definitely comfortable mentioning it to my friends in casual conversation.
Feel free to message this. I’d be happier to give more information about this privately. This is an issue that I feel passionate about.
Somewhere between 40 and 50% of Yale undergrads go to mental health during their time at Yale, at least for an intake session (and a lot don’t return after that or only go for a few sessions). From there, you have a few options - you can do a group therapy, which does a certain mode of therapy (there’s a DBT lite group for people with BPD/borderline traits), there’s CBT for anxiety, there’s general psychotherapy, there’s an eating disorder group). Every Yale student is eligible for 10 individual counseling sessions per year, but if you’re viewed to be an acute suicide risk, you can basically see your counselor as much as you want (not that you really want to fall into that category by any means!). I was seeing my therapist daily in the wake of suicide attempts and in the onset of mania. In addition, if you’re deemed to need medication, you’re assigned a psychiatrist as well as a social worker/psychologist (or you might even get assigned one anyway) and when you’re doing med changes, you might see them every two weeks, but otherwise you generally see them every month or so.
I hope I’m not oversharing here, but maybe by describing my own experience I can shed some light on the spectrum of resources available at Yale. I used mental health in my senior year, as my anxiety (which had been diagnosed for a decade, after I tried to jump out a window as a preteen and was taken to the ER), alcoholism and mood got out of hand. During my senior year, I was diagnosed with alcohol abuse disorder, BPD (which clinicians have since said I don’t have, but I guess my depressions have borderline features) and “mood disorder.” I was assigned a social worker because it was contemplated that my alcohol issues were dampening my mood, but within a few sessions it was obvious that my mood was in a very precarious place and that we really needed to focus on that because it was clearly a life or death issue. So I was prescribed antidepressants, and within a week, attempted suicide. Yale has an on call psychiatrist 24/7, so I called the acute care line, freaking out. The doctor told me to come in, told me that I seemed manic, and that he had no choice but to involuntarily hospitalize me.
I was hospitalized three times at Yale-New Haven during my senior year, twice involuntarily and once voluntarily (when I was so depressed and was desperate to try new medication because I thought I would die otherwise). After a psychotic manic episode that landed me in the ward for 2.5 weeks involuntarily, Yale’s mental health administration told me that I needed to take time off. All of that said, Yale did let me return to classes after my other hospitalizations (although a family member had to stay with me in New Haven), and the university worked with my family to find the correct time off solution that worked with my health insurance and my visa.
I hope this isn’t too much. I know that I probably sat right at extreme end of mental health at Yale, but even though my bipolar (or schizoaffective or whatever doctors want to call it) only really came on during my senior year, I think I could have benefited from it for other reasons. You don’t need to be psychotic or suicidal to see a therapist. You don’t even need to be depressed or anxious. Seeing someone is a hard thing to do, but it can help with so many issues going on in your life.
For anyone reading this and struggling with mental health issues, I really want to say it does get better. A year and a half ago, I was lying in my bed all day, crawling across the ground in my suite because I didn’t have the energy to stand, dreaming of dying, unable to recognize the faces of my friends because my cognitive function was so impaired by my depression. Now, I’ve got an ivy league degree with latin honors in hand, a banking job paying me a six figure salary a year out of college, and a zeal for life that I thought I’d never feel again. Sure, I was hospitalized for psychosis and mania for almost a month earlier this year after a med reduction. Things like that happen. But on the whole, I feel like I’ve got my life back. I can live again.