Mental and physical health should receive the same amount of funding from the University.
We pay copious amounts of money for tuition, and our fee bill includes access to the Student Health Center. Students can make an appointment to see a doctor if they’re sick and see a doctor the next day. For mental health appointments, it can take up to month to see a doctor, and even then, only high-risk patients are prioritized.
Once you get a consultation from one of the doctors on campus, they usually refer you to a therapist or psychiatrist off-campus. The health center should have these resources on campus for students. When students get a cold, they aren’t referred to a doctor off-campus, so why should someone with a mental health issue have to go off campus for treatment?
Mental health is something that should be taken more seriously in America. Just because you can’t see someone’s mental health doesn’t mean it’s not real. If you saw someone with a broken foot, you would clearly believe them because you can see what is wrong. If someone tells you they’re depressed, you may not believe them because it’s not something physical. But, depression can hurt just as bad, if not worse.
One in five adults have a mental health condition in America, which is more than 40 million people. America is already ranked one of the worst countries for mental health. Louisiana is ranked No. 47 in overall mental health care. Having one of the best universities in the country and still having one of the worst mental health care systems simply doesn’t add up. If we are one of the best universities, we should be creating a better place for mental health.
The University should care more about the health of their students than football. The amount of money they put toward athletics is much more compared to anything else on campus. Just look at Tiger Stadium compared to the Student Health Center. Football games are fun, but anxiety and depression within our student body isn’t.
As a top-tier university, we deserve access to mental health care. We need physicians who can help with other mental illnesses beside suicide. Suicide is an issue that needs help immediately, but lower-risk patients still deserve care. Students with anxiety, depression and other mental illnesses deserve the same treatment as those with physical illnesses.
Ashlon Lusk is a 19-year-old mass communication sophomore from Houston, Texas.