By Marta Tahja-Syrett.
Leslie Johnson’s position as a mental health therapist at The Evergreen State College requires her to play many roles. In addition to doing individual therapy sessions, Johnson co-facilitates and runs groups centered around mental health. Along with this, she works on staff at Evergreen’s Evaluation and Referral Services (EARS) clinic. Despite her extremely busy schedule, Johnson was able to sit down with me and discuss the importance of emotional support and normalizing mental health issues. She also discussed the connection between our current political climate and increasing rates of mental illness.
When students come to the EARS clinic, “We have this big menu of things that we can do. Individual counseling here is one thing,” said Johnson. “We do brief, short-term therapy here, mainly around issues of depression and anxiety, and then the usual things that happen when you come to college.” Located in Sem I 2110, the EARS clinic additionally offers same-day appointments and crisis hours for students in need of mental health support.
Sometimes a new environment, or another form of life-alteration, can force an individual to interface with underlying mental health issues. Johnson believes that college, specifically, can represent this sort of transitional phase. It is here that students are provided with an opportunity to not only confront mental health issues but also to redefine themselves.
“There are lots of reasons why students need a lot of support. And feeling bad about yourself or not confident, having trauma that you experienced when you were young, oftentimes that comes out when you get to college,” said Johnson. “People come out when they leave for college, change their mind about who they are, gender and identity.”
“And oftentimes when people come to school, they don’t think about what they’re ready for,” said Johnson.
According to a study reported by ABC News and previously published in the medical journal Depression and Anxiety, more college students today are experiencing depression and anxiety than ever. ABC News’ article, written by Italo M. Brown, accredits “mounting expectations, an evolving sense of self-identity, and the typical shock of leaving home for a new place” to issues surrounding mental health. Johnson believes that outside of these aforementioned factors, social conditions can also be attributed to the increase in mental health hardships.
“The country is in a state of unrest. People are feeling really stressed by the current political situation. On all sides, feeling helpless, overwhelmed, don’t know what they can do. I thought that the generation of my parents were screwing everything up, and I was mad at them for screwing it up and mad that I had to fix it. And I think that all generations face that sort of, ‘What can we do? I’m just one person.’ And we’ve never seen a political arena like we’re looking at today. We’ve never seen anything like that happen, and there’s no norm for that, and there’s no context for how do you deal with that. And I think it’s been really stressful, people are reacting to the stress. I think we’re seeing more anxiety and more depression, not just in college systems but just across the United States, as a result of that,” said Johnson. “And how that’s handled makes a big difference, too. You can get overwhelmed by media — it’s constantly in the news. Some people feel compulsion to hear everything, to be aware. Other people don’t want to hear anything, and that stresses them out,” said Johnson.
In connection with our society’s heightened awareness regarding global warming, many of Johnson’s clients have expressed feelings of anxiety and desperation.
“I talk to a lot of people that are very concerned about the environment and feel overwhelmed about that, and what can they do. And none of us can take care of that on our own. We all have to just do what we can in a way that feels right to us, and that we can handle. Helping people to sort of find a place where they can get some peace, where they can find some balance and support, is really important in this environment,” said Johnson.
According to an article written by Jane E. Brody and published by The New York Times, suicide is the second highest cause of death amongst college students. In response to startling suicide statistics, Johnson believes that post-secondary institutions need to be proactive by providing their student populations with adequate support.
“We need to normalize [the idea] that having a mental health issue doesn’t make you less of a person, that it doesn’t mean that you’re flawed,” said Johnson. “Part of what we [mental health therapists] do is, first of all, see people and hear them. Everybody needs to be seen and heard and understood. [A mental health facility or therapist office] might be, for some people, the only place where they feel like that’s happening. If you can feel more confident about your life, and able to handle anxiety and depression and things that roll along, you’re going to be able to do a lot more of what makes you happy.”
A significant factor in maintaining support for student well-being is funding. Johnson believes that government allotted resources are an integral component of accessibility.
“Much more money needs to go into mental health in this country than there is,” said Johnson. “Historically, when they’ve cut benefits to things across the United States, the federal government has cut way back on mental health services and they counted on the communities to pick up the slack. They were looking to volunteers to pick up the slack, and you can only cut things down so far and then it just doesn’t function, especially when it’s people-delivered services.”
Johnson feels that therapists at The Evergreen State College are truly dedicated to supporting students and ensuring that their needs are met.
“We look at ways that they feel stressed and overwhelmed, and what can we do about that. We look at all the different options for treating that. We’re going to make sure that they’re going to get the help that they need, and we take that really seriously,” said Johnson.
During the process of identifying student needs, therapists on campus may determine that an individual needs long-term mental health support. Therapists can then aid in a student’s search for external resources in the greater Olympia community.
“When they come in, we talk about what is it that they need, what are they looking for. We look at where they’re at and what brings them in today. And if it’s a long-term issue, it’s been going on for a long time, they’re probably better served in the community where they can do long-term therapy,” said Johnson. “We refer a lot, and we know a lot of therapists, and so we can help them with that.”
Johnson noted that, in addition to referring students to therapists, mental health professionals can also direct individuals to groups located on campus. These groups utilize a variety of techniques in order to help individuals maintain emotional health.
“We show you all the groups we have, we can get you enrolled in groups,” said Johnson. “There are really cool groups, on mindfulness and relationships. We do trauma groups, we do wilderness therapy.”
Johnson also expressed excitement about another facet of Evergreen’s Student Wellness Services — one that just recently came to fruition in the past few months.
“We have this new website that we got this year called TAO,” said Johnson. “It’s got meditative things, it talks about boundaries, anxiety, depression.”
The web-based service additionally does not monitor who is accessing it, allowing students to feel a sense of confidentiality. Students can log into the resource during all hours of the day and as often as they would like.
The link to TAO (Therapist Assisted Online) is available on the Student Wellness Services section of Evergreen’s website. To access this free service, students only need their identification number (A number).
Correction: In an earlier version of this article, “brief, short-term therapy” was misquoted as “grief, short-term therapy.”
