Frame

My research took off with the article "Prevalence and Correlates of Depression, Anxiety, and Suicidality Among University Students" by Eisenberg, Gollust, Golberstein, and Hefner. This article gives statistics about the rise of anxiety and depression among college students. An interesting conclusion of this study was that students who had financial struggles were at higher risk for mental illness. The study concluded that mental illness needs to be addresses in order to keep college success rates high and diverse. This last sentence ties in with retention rates, which i will discuss in the next paragraph. I used the terms anxiety and depression from this article and defined them in the beginning of my paper.

From the article, "Students Under Pressure" by Amy Novotney I plan to use some statistics about the prevalence of anxiety and depression. She touches upon the increase in the number of students reaching out for clinical help. An interesting technology she spoke about was the Therapist Assisted Online (TAO) program. I will go into detail about this technology in the portion of my paper that explains what can be done to help the universities deal with the increased rates of students seeking help. Another technology known as the brief assessment and referral team (BART) is also used to help shorten the time of the initial interview. Implementing new technologies like the BART and the TAO program will be able minimize the waitlist problem. An important term which fueled the direction my paper is taking is the term retention rates. Colleges care a lot about retention rates, and the likelihood that students drop out have a high correlation with the students struggling with mental illness. To keep retention rates up, most students need to be receiving help if they struggle with anxiety/ depression.

One of the articles I am planning on using throughout my entire paper is the "Increased demand for mental health services on college campuses" article. The researchers asked plenty of question to administrators from a variety amount of schools, all leading to the same conclusion. The administrators and the researchers concluded that there is an increase (gives some reasons why),  what the universities can do to help, and potential problems they may run into while doing so. This leads me to the next article, "Time-Limited Service Alternatives: Using Therapeutic Enactment in Open Group Therapy." I will use this article in my paper to explain how group therapy could be a viable option for all universities. There are so many benefits of group therapy to both the students and the universities, that it would be absurd not to use it. Psychosocial factors is a key term that comes up in both of these articles, which i will define earlier on in my paper.

My paper will flow from understanding the increase, to explaining why the increase has occurred. I am tying in all of my research to better understand all possible reasons why, which include lower SES, social drinking, and the usual stressors brought out by college such as increased responsibility. Another important reason that is mentioned in a few different resources of mine is the fact the millennials are not used to failing, and strive to be the best all the time-- this can lead to negative feeling about the self that cause or bring out depression and anxiety. After the reasons are understood, I am discussing what the universitites can do to help cope with the increase. This includes, technologies, group therapy, and helping students and faculty to be more educated upon the topic of mental illness. After this, it is important to discuss the problems of not acknowledging the increase, and potential problems the universities may run into while trying to deal with the increase. I will tie this all together by talking about how privatization simply does not allow for the counseling centers to expand in many ways because they are not being funded.