University Times

Older undergraduate students are becoming more likely to seek Pitt’s counseling services than their underclassman and grad student counterparts, according to the director of the University Counseling Center. This reflects a national trend.

In academic year 2004-05, seniors made up almost a quarter of the center’s 1,500 new cases —up from 13 percent five years ago, said James Cox, who was reporting Jan. 31 to Faculty Assembly on demographics and counseling issues. Viewed another way, the most new cases in the past year came from students aged 20-23, some 850 altogether, Cox said.

“We’re not exactly sure why those numbers went up so much, but we plan to survey our seniors and try to find out,” Cox said. His educated guesses for the rise in need for counseling among older undergrads include “real world” concerns such as finding a job, uncertainty about the war in Iraq and the instability of the economy, as well as the increase in alcohol use by students in that age group, he said.

Across the board, the most-cited reason for students seeking counseling services for the first time is a relationship problem, Cox said. Fifteen percent cited problems with friends or roommates; 26 percent with family, and 32 percent with romantic relationships, he said.

Also common among new cases are anxiety disorders (36 percent), depression (31 percent), academic performance (19 percent), career concerns (16 percent), eating disorders (7 percent) and unwanted pregnancy (0.22 percent). The total exceeds 100 percent, because many students cite multiple reasons for seeking counseling.

Cox also reported:

• The demographic breakdown of students by educational discipline, ethnicity and citizenship status approximates the breakdown for the general student population. International students, for example, made up 4.19 percent of new cases, while they represent 6.24 percent of the student population.

• About 62 percent of students who seek services live off campus, with 28 percent on campus, 8 percent at home and 2 percent in Greek housing. This is another indication that older students, more of whom live off campus, are seeking counseling, Cox said. It also shows that undergrads in residence halls have a stronger support system, including on-site resident assistants and access to counseling information.

• About 75 percent of students who use the counseling services have health insurance.

• January is the highest intake month for new students, with September and October the next highest.

• Most students say they are self-referring to the center, but that could be deceiving, Cox said, because they may not realize the idea to seek help came from a friend, adviser or teacher.

• The center sees about 2,600 students each year, including students who return for counseling from a previous year. “We used to put a 12-visit limit on a student, but now we only do that in rare cases,” Cox said. He added that without the limit, the center’s statistics show that, on average, students actually visit fewer times.

Faculty Assembly also heard a report from Nathan Hershey, who chairs the ad hoc committee on consumer satisfaction with UPMC. Hershey recommended that Pitt’s faculty ask for representation on an internal UPMC advisory group concerned with customer satisfaction.

Some Assembly members had other suggestions: naming a complaint ombudsman to be Pitt’s point person with UPMC officials; continuing to rely on Human Resources benefits staff to fill that role; establishing an oversight mechanism that would ensure that problems are not solved in isolation but that solutions are instituted system-wide so the same problems don’t recur.

Assembly adjourned without taking action.

—Peter Hart