Statements on Introduced Bills and Joint Resolutions

Floor Speech

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Mr. DURBIN. Mr. President, three years ago, a mentally disturbed gunman walked into a campus lecture hall at Northern Illinois University and shot 22 students, killing 5 of them. Northern Illinois University is not the first college to experience this kind of tragedy. We all remember the horrific events at Virginia Tech in 2007 where 32 lives were taken by a gunman.

In the aftermath of these shootings, we asked what could have been done to prevent it. And years later, we are still trying to make sense of it. Some believe nothing can be done to stop a disturbed person from committing acts of violence. But I believe we can and should do more.

For a long time, we have overlooked the mental health needs of students on college campuses. We know now that many mental illnesses start to manifest in this period when young people leave the security of home and regular medical care. The responsibility for the students' well-being often shifts from parents to students, and the students aren't always completely prepared. It is easier for a young person's problems to go unnoticed when he or she is away at college than when they are at home, in the company of parents, old friends, and high school teachers. College also provides a new opportunity for young people to experiment with drugs or alcohol.

The consequences of not detecting or addressing mental health needs among students are real. Suicide remains the third leading cause of death for adolescents and young adults between ages 10-24. Suicide takes the lives of more young adults than AIDS, cancer, heart disease, pneumonia, birth defects, and influenza combined. Forty-five percent of college students report having felt so depressed that it was difficult to function. Ten percent have contemplated suicide. There are over 1,000 suicides on college campus each year. These heartbreaking and traumatic incidents demonstrate the tragic consequences of mental instability and help us recognize we need to do more to support students during what can be very tough years.

Fortunately, many students can succeed in college if they have appropriate counseling services and access to needed medications. These services make a real impact. Students who seek help are six times less likely to kill themselves. Colleges are welcoming students today who 10 or 20 years ago would not have been able to attend school due to mental illness, but who can today because of advances in treatment.

But while the needs for mental health services on campus are rising, colleges are facing financial pressures and having trouble meeting this demand. As I have travelled around my State, I have learned just how thin colleges and universities are stretched when it comes to providing counseling and other support services to students.

Take Southern Illinois University in Carbondale. SIUC has 8 full-time counselors for 20,000 students. That is 1 counselor for every 2,500 students. The recommended ratio is 1 counselor for every 1,500 students. And there is another problem. Like many rural communities, Carbondale only has one community mental health agency. That agency is overwhelmed by the mental health needs of the community and refuses to serve students from SIUC. The campus counseling center is the only mental health option for students. The eight hard-working counselors at SIUC do their best under impossible conditions. They triage students who come in seeking help so that the ones who might be a threat to themselves or others are seen first. The waitlist of students seeking services has reached 45 students.

The story is the same across the country. Colleges are trying to fill in the gaps, but because of the shortage of counselors, students' needs are overlooked. A recent survey of college counseling centers indicates that the average ratio of professional-staff-to-students is 1 to 1,900. Although interest in mental health services is high, the recession has put pressure on administrators to cut budgets wherever they can. At times, counseling centers are in the crosshairs. Ten percent of survey respondents said their budgets were cut during the 2007-8 academic year, half said their budgets stayed the same, and nearly a quarter reported that their funds increased by 3 percent or less.

With so many students looking for help and so few counselors to see them, counseling centers have to cut back on outreach. Without outreach, the chances of finding students who need help but don't ask for it goes down. This is a serious problem. We know that some students exhibit warning signs of a tortured mental state and four out of five young adults show warning signs before attempting suicide. But faculty and students don't always know how or where to express their concerns. Outreach efforts by campus counseling centers can help educate the community about warning signs to look for as well as how to intervene. Of the students who committed suicide across the country in 2007, only 22 percent had received counseling on campus. That means that of the 1,000 college students who took their own lives, 800 may never have looked for help. How many of those young lives could have been saved if our college counseling centers had the resources they needed to identify those students and help them? Our students deserve better.

We need to help schools meet the needs of their students, and that is why I am an original cosponsor of the Garrett Lee Smith Memorial Act Reauthorization. This bill includes an important provision of the Mental Health on Campus Improvement Act, which I introduced last Congress that would increase funding for colleges and universities to improve their mental health services. Colleges could use the funding to hire personnel, increase outreach, and educate the campus community about mental health. The Garrett Lee Smith Memorial Act Reauthorization would provide States, tribes/tribal organizations, and universities with much needed resources to prevent suicide.

Reflecting on the loss of his own son, the well-known minister Rev. William Sloan Coffin once said, ``When parents die, they take with them a portion of the past. But when children die, they take away the future as well.'' I hope the Garrett Lee Smith Memorial Act will help prevent the unnecessary loss of more young lives and bright futures.

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