사회가 고도화되고 발전함에 따라 정신문제가 안많아 질수가 없습니다. 너무 바쁘고 빠르고 계속 변하고 경쟁은 치열해지자나요. 예전에는 대학만 보내면 다 키웠다고 맘대로 내놓고 키워도 되는 사회였는데, 요즘은 대학을 가도 졸업을 해도 취업을 해도 결혼을 해도, 부모들의 걱정은 끝이 없습니다. 어느하나라도 잘 못하면 더 큰걱정이고요.

미국 대학생들 통계를 보면,

우울하다는 학생들도 늘고 있고

정신상담과 정신과치료가 필요한 학생도 늘고 있고

이에따라 대학들도 무료로 언제든지 필요한 사람은 상담을 할수 있게하고 있다고 합니다.

미국은 자동차도 많고 총까지 휴대할수 있어 정신질환이 있는 사람이 많아지면 사회의 안전이 위협받을수 있어, 상당히 적극적으로 대처하는 것 같습니다.

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http://www.wsj.com/articles/mental-health-crunch-on-campus-1430082408?mod=WSJ_article_EditorsPicks_0

Mental-Health Crunch on Campus

Universities are hiring more psychologists and psychiatrists, but students in some cases are footing much of the bill

Universities are hiring more social workers, psychologists and psychiatrists as demand for campus mental-health services rises. But persistent budget gaps mean that students in some cases foot much of the cost of the positions.

Students at George Washington University will be charged an additional $1,667 in tuition next year, a jump of 3.4%. More than $830,000 of the resulting new revenue will pay for mental-health services.

Regents at the University of California system are weighing a plan to hire 70 additional psychologists—a 40% increase—and 20 more psychiatrists—a 60% jump—to keep up with the demand at counseling centers across its 10 campuses. Administrators estimate the annual cost of the hires would top $17.4 million, and they plan to raise a mandatory annual student services fee to $1,242 from $972 by the 2019-2020 academic year to cover some of the expense.

“The demand [by students] so outpaces the supply of appointments that it’s very hard to get a weekly appointment, even for students having pretty serious symptoms that interfere with their academic function,” said Elizabeth Gong-Guy, executive director of counseling and psychological services at UCLA and president of the Association for University and College Counseling Center Directors.

The increase in students seeking mental-health care mirrors society at large, where more people are taking drugs for depression, anxiety and related concerns. The stigma surrounding psychiatric issues also has faded among younger generations, experts say.

Nearly 59% of college counseling center directors reported that their operating budgets rose in 2013, up from 23% in 2012 and 15% in 2009, according to a survey by the Association for University and College Counseling Center Directors. Yet many schools fall far short of recommendations regarding the number of mental-health professionals they should have for the size of their student populations—and about one-third don’t have a psychiatrist on campus at all.

With more students arriving already taking medication or having seen therapists, colleges are struggling to navigate their roles in this highly sensitive area, balancing student safety with financial, privacy and liability concerns.

Schools including Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the University of Pennsylvania are re-evaluating their mental-health programs—and students’ drive for perfection—in the wake of recent campus suicides. And some colleges face controversy about complex rules covering how students may take medical leave for psychiatric issues.

MIT, which had six suicides in the past year, recently launched a pilot study on student workloads in electrical engineering and computer science, its largest academic department. “We will identify ways to adjust curricular expectations, such as possibly spreading work more evenly over the semester,” said MIT Chancellor Cynthia Barnhart.

Karen Hao, an MIT senior, said students can put too much pressure on themselves. “We are so caught up in our pride that we don’t realize the toll” an MIT workload can take, she wrote in the school newspaper.

In her own struggles with depression, Ms. Hao gave up seeking treatment because navigating the school’s system of phone interviews and screenings was too exhausting, she said in an interview. “Like many students I knew that mental health services existed, but I think it’s a flaw in the system to give the responsibility to go to mental health to the student who is actually mentally ill,” she said.

Nearly 10% of current freshmen nationally said they “frequently” felt depressed, compared with 6.1% in 2009, according to a survey of first-year students by the University of California, Los Angeles’s Higher Education Research Institute.

Meanwhile, college counseling centers reported in 2013 that 26% of their clients are on psychiatric medications, up from 9% in 1994, according to a survey by the American College Counseling Association and International Association of Counseling Services.

“More and more students are coming in that are beyond the scope of our services,” said Charles Beale, director of the University of Delaware’s center for counseling and student development.

Nine percent of Delaware’s 22,000 students find their way to the counseling center each year, receiving services from the equivalent of 1.75 full-time psychiatrists, four interns, three post-docs and 15 psychologists. Though the school has hired the equivalent of two full-time psychologists in recent years, Mr. Beale said, “I could probably hire four new psychologists and they’d all have a full case load in six months.”