In the wake of the Tucson shooting earlier this year as well as the rise in teenage suicides last year, campuses aim to remain vigilant towards those with mental illnesses.

“Community colleges have a unique burden,” Rebecca Cobb, director of student development, said, “We are an open-access campus, a microcosm of whatever the surrounding community is.  I think the burden has become diminishing resources for a population with increasing needs.”

Students get six free one-hour, one on one sessions with a psychologist a year, said Debbie Conover, coordinator of student health services.  EC has a clinical psychologist that comes in four days a week on appointment.

“They could come in via several ways.  It could be that they were referred in by one of their teachers, it may be that a teacher found something like a disturbing thing a student wrote,” Conover said.

Conover explained that due to confidentiality reasons, nobody but the student themselves can make an appointment, which is done in the health center located by the Pool and Physical Education buildings.

“We have them fill out kind of like a preliminary questionnaire, just to make sure they aren’t in any immediate danger to themselves or others,” Conover said.

The health office can also make referrals to outside institutions to further help students with their mental illnesses should the six sessions offered by EC not be enough, Conover said.

“Our sessions are done in a crisis intervention manner, which means we try to find out the problem, give them some tools to be able to pick themselves up and move forward,” she said, “In the event that the student can’t accomplish what they need to have accomplished in the six sessions, then we have resources for community referrals.”

EC also offers free workshops led by the college’s part-time psychologist on select dates, with the next workshop, entitled “Test Anxiety,” being on Tuesday, March 8 at 11 a.m..  More information on workshops can be found on the “ECC Student Health Services” newsletter, which can be found in the health office.

Faculty members are not in the position to help these students with their mental illnesses.

“What we look at is their ability to function in the classroom,” Julio Farias, psychology associate professor, said,  “a person can have a mental illness and still go to work, go to school, have relationships, and we’d not be aware of it.  As long as these students are functional, we don’t really care.”

Farias said that ideally more care should be offered to these students but that it’s a bad idea for faculty members to try and help them their selves.

“One it’s unethical, and second it’s a bad idea to try and counsel them.  This is an academic environment; we are not here to treat that mentally ill student,” Farias said, “Ideally, it would be great if we could help that one student, but if that one student is going to affect the learning of all the other students in the classroom, unfortunately we simply don’t like unstable students.”

The subject of how much a college is supposed to do for these students remains hard to figure out.

“Do I think it’s the campuses job?  No,” Cobb said, “Do I think we have an obligation?  Yes, but I don’t think we can be educators and also try to support lives of these students.”