The pressures of dealing with a college course load can be too much to handle for younger SU student, despite being back on campus. Assistant professor at the Falk School of Social Work Stepahnie Pilkay suggested they might be feeling run down from pandemic stress.
“ It makes sense that the burden of long term stress around the Pandemic would eventually start to wear down the resilience of individuals," Pilkay said. "The way our fight or flight works, is that the more long term stress we experience the more long term consequences we experience.”
Many of these students come to the Barnes Center not just for counseling but also anxiety medication. Counseling center psychiatric consultant Tania Marshall said the counseling center does not have enough counselors to address the large caseload they’re facing.
“I don’t think that they’re equipped to the point that when there's a crisis and they have to get things like medication involved and they have to monitor them," Marshall said. "And doing actual therapy on campus, Syracuse University could do a better job instead of just outsourcing.”
Marshall said the school needs to add more nurse practitioners and on-campus psychiatrists to its staff. The pandemic has exacerbated a shortage of mental health workers nationwide.