Winston Crisp sends letter to parents about well-being

Vice President of Student Affairs Winston Crisp posted a letter to the USC Parents Facebook group Thursday morning acknowledging a lack of parent communication regarding concerns of mental health and assuring them of the University’s ongoing commitment to student well-being. Since the start of the school year, at least five students have passed away.   

According to the letter, the University has expanded services at the counseling center, hiring 12 additional counselors in recent months. Crisp wrote that with the increased number of counselors, the student-to-therapist ratio at the University now meets national recommendation numbers. 

“We are only at the beginning,” Crisp wrote. “We will continue to improve [University mental health resources] by adding more resources and services as necessary. In the meantime … we are reviewing and revising our care model including intake, and screening and referral to ensure that we can provide the best possible services.”

The International Accreditation of Counseling Services recommends a ratio of one therapist per 1,000-1,500 students. Executive Director and Division Chief for Student Health Robert Mendola said the Counseling and Mental Health department had one counselor for every 1,800 students in October 2018. 

Student concern regarding wait times at the health center has been ongoing.

Crisp also wrote that the addition of long-term mental health services to Engemann Student Health Center, which was proposed as part of an overhaul of USC’s mental health services introduced in 2018, will be implemented by summer 2020.

Dr. Steven Siegel, chair of the Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences, said the expansion aims to broaden mental health care access to a wider student population and provide a convenient clinical setting for ongoing mental health care.

“One of our goals is really to look inward now, examine how we’re delivering our care inside Student Health and think really judiciously about ‘Is there another way?’” Siegel said. “We are putting a lot of our effort into just examining every step from initial contact and trying to think about better ways to have first contact within Student Health.”

According to Siegel, the floor will be staffed by six psychiatrists and 12 therapists devoted solely to clinical care. Currently, the estimated 45 Counseling and Mental Health staff members serve on crisis and outreach teams in addition to their roles as clinicians.

The post was made in the wake of the death of senior John Moore, whose passing on Sunday was the most recent of at least five student deaths since the start of the semester. In the letter, Crisp wrote that the University recently partnered with the JED Foundation, a nonprofit organization that works with colleges and high schools to improve programs focused on student mental health and the prevention of suicide and substance abuse.

The letter also comes one week after a town hall event discussing mental health and wellbeing that was hosted by the Undergraduate Student Government on Oct. 24. 

At the event, which reportedly had an audience of 10 students, staff from USC Student Health, Counseling and Mental Health and Campus Wellbeing & Crisis Intervention spoke about mental health options currently available to USC students and resources the University will work to provide in the future, including the planned expansion of Engemann to offer longer-term mental health services.

As part of Trojan Family Weekend, a panel for parents called “Your Student’s Wellbeing” was held Thursday. The panel, moderated by Provost Charles Zukoski, featured mental health professionals and University administrators about student health and well-being.

Crisp closed the panel with a call to action.

“We’re going to be working on the communication avenues,” Crisp said. “But in the meantime, we need you — especially now, when we’ve got a lot of mental health issues going on not just in this country but at this University — we need you checking in, we need you asking questions, we need you still trying to figure out when you think something is maybe not going right.”

Crisp asked parents to alert the University via Trojans Care for Trojans or the new 411 helpline in the event that they notice anything unusual in their communication with their students, saying that parents are still students’ first point of contact when they might be struggling.