Out of the waiting room

Talia R., a junior, heard the phone click on the other end. Her eyes brimmed with tears and her shoulders shook, but the therapist never would have known. She had been promised a phone consultation with the Engemann Student Health Center and had been waiting for three weeks, but spoke for no more than two minutes before a therapist interrupted and asked if she had thought about suicide. When she replied no, she said the therapist immediately told her, “Since your situation is not dire, you will be placed on a waitlist. If you don’t hear back from us in two weeks, you can try again.”

She hung up and did not get a follow-up call until four months later at the end of the semester. By that time she had resorted to therapy outside of USC to cope with another stressful semester.

Their installment is part of The Keck School of Medicine’s plan to increase administrative oversight of Engemann and Eric Cohen Health Center. This merger aims to allow the student health centers to benefit from the faculty expertise and organization of Keck and address grievances regarding access to care.

“Four is not enough. There will never be enough.” Mendola says. “We probably need 20 more therapists.”

Mendola and his team, along with USC Vice President for Student Affairs Ainsley Carry, are constructing more preventative services and promoting group therapy. Within Engemann, The Office for Wellness and Health Promotion in collaboration with Be Well USC put on a “happy hour” in which students are encouraged to develop self-care and stress management through yoga or tai chi. They also offer a therapy dog, Beau.

Increasingly common on college campuses, these low-intensity preventative services can be effective. Students say they find brief bliss in petting Beau or crunching on a shiny green apple. But for students like Talia R., who did not want to be fully identified for privacy reasons, Engemann’s current “acute care model” means barriers to therapy access, long wait times, and little follow up.

USC offers a subset of therapy dealing specifically with sexual assault — RSVP, Relationship and Sexual Violence Prevention and Services. Four faculty members run RSVP and a fifth therapist for RSVP is in the budget for Fall 2018. Two students who have received mental health through RSVP praised this niche of Engemann for providing personable and focused care. These therapists know their patients by name and students can quickly and easily get appointments. One junior said her therapist checked on her twice in a day after a particularly tough session. Since the demand for services is lower and there are more resources, this program can offer personable and reliable therapy. But general therapy is limited to 12 sessions at Engemann.

A 2014 female graduate, Cynthia, who did not want to be fully identified for privacy reasons, told Neon that freshman year, her parents moved back to China and she fell into a deep depression. She spent weekends whittling away the hours in her twin XL bed in Marks Tower. Her resident adviser urged her to seek help through USC’s therapy program, but when she found out that she could only receive 12 sessions over her entire undergraduate career, she was discouraged.

“I already wanted to give up,” she said. “I thought, what if I feel suicidal by junior year? I can’t waste these sessions now.”

“Another big problem is the student health fee,” Mendola says. USC students can either enroll in the school’s health insurance or stick with their waived outside healthcare provider. A waived provider means that the student is covered by a comprehensive health care plan that meets the university’s requirements and is in compliance with the Affordable Care Act. Either way, all students must pay the student health fee — $334 for fall 2017 and $333 for Spring 2018. This fee is mandatory and cannot be waived. It lets any student access Engemann.

When students are covered by an outside health care provider that has been approved by the school, if they seek mental health resources from Engemann and are referred to an outside therapist, the system won’t necessarily ensure that their therapy referrals are covered by their waived in-network providers. If the referrals are not covered, the sessions with outside providers quickly become expensive.

A junior majoring in International Relations says that when Engemann referred him to a list of outside therapists, only 2 of the 10 therapists were covered by his waived, outside health care provider.

A 2016 UCLA graduate, Jacob Temkin, says that UCLA CAPS, Counseling and Psychological Services, is highly promoted by student government and faculty on campus. Specific student support groups for LGBTQ students and students of color are publicized and encouraged as well. UCLA also has a program called The Student Wellness Commission, which is a rapidly growing student and faculty club that promotes holistic well-being through programs and projects like anti-smoking campaigns and awareness on mental health fairs. Seeking help or advice in mental health is widely encouraged on the UCLA campus.

USC Undergraduate Student Government has been advocating for new services for several years, and mental health is part of many election platforms this year. However, many students believe student organizations could do a better job spreading the word about these programs. Students like senior Joy Ofodu have taken it upon themselves to speed up change and increase awareness.

Ofodu met with Provost Quick and Van Ormann to voice student grievances about Engemann. “It is comforting to know that they are working on things,” says Ofodu. “Being a student on this campus you can feel small, but we have to take advocacy into our own hands and make our complaints heard.”