Student Leadership in Mental Health at Western

With my time at Western coming to a close as of this June, I’ve decided that in my final months I’m going to point out my various grievances with the Counseling Center. This is not a discussion on the lack of services available, rather a discussion on the distrust between student leaders in mental health and the Counseling Center, as a whole.

 

Certain student leaders have stopped attending the Suicide Prevention Advisory Committee (SPAC) meetings. This isn’t due to being too busy, or not caring. This is an issue of not feeling welcome or important in the discussions surrounding mental health at Western, and in some cases feeling that the Counseling Center is using these student leaders as a method to fix their image, rather than to foster an actual connection between student leaders and the administration at Western Washington University.

 

Over the months of involvement with the SPAC, we’ve been asked to promote various efforts of the Counseling Center, but very rarely have our organizations been on the receiving side of their assistance. They promote the idea that we can ask for assistance but haven’t provided any tangible idea of what we can be assisted with. In addition, there is also very little predictability with how the Counseling Center will be involved in these efforts.

 

In the past, the BRAVE program, recently renamed as the Suicide Prevention Program, established by the grant we received from the state, largely swallowed up the Walk of Hope event, leaving very little planning responsibilities in the hands of the student organization that organizes it, To Write Love On Her Arms. Following the end of the grant, the Counseling Center, having basically taken it over the year before, handed it back to TWLOHA saying that it wasn’t theirs, and battled with the organization over whether or not to provide any support in the funding of an event that they had almost entirely organized the year prior.

 

I’m not saying that student-led events are their funding priority in any sense, but the hectic nature of the Counseling Center’s involvement has made me distrustful of receiving any support for NAMI related events or programs, as I don’t know if the effort will be taken out of my organizations hands and then thrown back to us once they’ve decided it made them look good enough.

 

Between the three students who were originally involved in SPAC, there was a sense that our efforts were being moved forward without us, and happening without a place for us at the table. While I understand that these discussions don’t require student involvement, it has shown how little our voices actually matter to those in positions of power at Western. We have been pawns to make the Counseling Center look better to the community, but all of the support we’ve received has been half-hearted, reluctant, or non-existent.

 

One of the first examples I witnessed of this was related to a student leader working with the organization Forefront, a non-profit focusing on suicide prevention efforts that is based out of the University of Washington. In September 2016, this representative had reached out to the Counseling Center Director regarding offering Forefront’s LEARN training at Western. She wasn’t looking to be formally endorsed by the Counseling Center, but rather was looking to get a space on campus to offer the training.

 

Immediately, this became of interest to the Counseling Center as it could potentially accompany the failing Kognito training modules. Instead of telling her outright that they didn’t intend to utilize her training, they asked for her to assist with various Counseling Center efforts, and when asked for why the process of offering it on campus, was given excuses for why the process was taking so long. This individual wasn’t informed that Western was tasked with operating their own suicide prevention training, and was instead left in the dark to believe that the Counseling Center intended to utilize LEARN training. Ultimately the person who finally informed her that the director didn’t intend to utilize the training was the Suicide Prevention Coordinator.

 

In the Spring, after an entire academic year of being of service to the Counseling Center, the individual was finally informed by a separate individual that the Counseling Center Director had NEVER intended to utilize the training, despite actively supporting the idea when in discussion with this student.

 

Following this incident, this individual was invited to a meeting with the Director, likely as a means to provide excuses for why this situation had carried on so long, but excuses are hollow. We don’t want or need excuses. We need acknowledgement. Their excuses only invalidate our experiences and are aimed primarily at saving face rather than acknowledging how much they’ve betrayed the student leaders who were trying to create a better atmosphere at Western.

 

The Suicide Prevention Coordinator is an excellent addition to Western’s community, but the problem is deep rooted. She has fought for our involvement since the beginning, and truly did listen to our insight, but there are not enough individuals who are like her in higher positions at Western to make me feel that this is a healthy connection for my club going into the future.

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