By: Aly Richards ’21, Staff Writer
Students have reported that their mental health is overall being impacted negatively by the pandemic.
“At first, quarantine was not a huge deal for me because I’m already a private person, so being cooped up at home was not a big deal for me,” Jesse Kaufmann, a senior audio and music production major, said. “But over time, the way in which you lose the agency to go out and do anything really started to wear on me.”
Jim Felty, a licensed professional counselor on campus, explains that poor mental health can impact many aspects of students’ lives, especially in school.
“Poor mental health when we don’t get support and help from either paraprofessionals or professionals can be very disruptive,” Felty said. “Depending on what that issue is will determine the type of disruption.”
According to Felty, there has been an influx of students to the health center this semester. Last semester, there were four counselors; this means that Felty and his coworker are taking on cases that the other counselors had and managing the influx of students coming into the health center. This makes managing the caseload difficult.
“There’s a waitlist because there’s that lag of trying to get in as many students as we can where we can,” Felty said. “I’m hopeful that nobody is out there not getting the service that they want because of that.”
Felty explains that there are many factors as to why he believes there is a negative effect on students’ mental health. However, what he believes to be a big factor is the lack of social interaction and the difficulty for students to make a connection with one another.
“I think the pandemic, especially the social isolation part, exacerbated mental health issues and also brought out some that were maybe latent in some students,” Felty said. “Once we start not connecting with each other, communication goes down, we isolate and we start to internalize our feelings and our thoughts more, which doesn’t help. In fact, what it does is generates more of those negative feelings.
A few students have echoed what Felty said. Several agreed that the lack of social interaction was contributing to poor mental health, and that it is one of the biggest stressors.
“I didn’t realize I was a people person before COVID, and now I realize I need to be around certain people,” Carter Kucier, a sophomore audio and music production major, said.
Felty encourages any student who feels that they are struggling to visit the health center and to keep reaching out to get the help they need.
The health center, temporarily located in Bishop Library, has open-hours from 11 a.m. to 1 p.m. Monday through Friday. A 50/50 peer helper is available at various points throughout the day.