The April 2022 CCMH blog post has been guest authored by Jonathan C. Cox and E. Shannon Neeley-Tass at Brigham Young University, Provo, UT.  Dr. Cox and Dr. Tass have graciously written April's post to share their findings for Autism Acceptance Month.  CCMH is incredibly grateful to Dr. Cox and Dr. Neeley-Tass for conducting this important research, using the CCMH dataset, and for share their findings with the CCMH community.

In February 2021, CCMH released a 5-part blog series that examined the initial impacts of COVID-19 on college students seeking treatment for mental health concerns. In Blog 2 of 5, CCMH compared student distress levels before and after the onset of COVID-19 using data from Fall 2019 and Fall 2020.  This blog expands on those analyses and explores the following questions using updated data from Fall 2021.

The recent racial uprisings in the U.S., coupled with the Covid-19 pandemic, have given renewed attention to the daily manifestations of racism and racial inequities that operate in American society. Race, which is a human invention lacking a valid biological basis, has very real consequences for people from historically racially marginalized groups. Public perceptions of the presence and importance of racism suggest that racism is wide-spread and affects people of color disproportionately, particularly Black people (Pew Research Center, 2016). Indeed, recent data from the FBI found that in 2020, Black people accounted for approximately one third of people targeted by hate-based crimes due to their race (FBI, n.d.). Anti-Black racism, which describes the historical dehumanization of Black bodies, is particularly pernicious and has been shown to make Black people acutely susceptible to the harmful impacts of racism, particularly on mental health.

The CCMH 2021 Annual Report describes 153,233 unique college students, nationally and internationally, seeking mental health treatment; 4,043 clinicians; and more than 1,135,520 appointments from the 2020-2021 academic year. This is the 13th year the report has been produced. 

This blog is a summary of a CCMH study on presenting concerns in counseling centers published in 2017.

This blog is a summary of a sleep research article recently accepted for publication that used CCMH data.

 Alignment (n) - the proper positioning or state of adjustment of parts (as of a mechanical or electronic device) in relation to each other.

The Center for Collegiate Mental Health, a practice research network of over 650 university and college counseling centers, has produced many publications looking at mental health distress and treatment outcomes for different populations and demographic groups seeking services at counseling centers. One of the populations that has been frequently studied is LGBTQ+ students. In this blog, we summarize our findings related to this population with hopes that it will be helpful to clinicians working with college students.

Professionally Growing up in CCMH: An Insider’s Perspective

CCMH now comprises over 625 counseling centers, and continues to grow and adapt every year to new challenges and demands by using clinically relevant research. The data gathered are immense in scope and impact, and we are also constantly trying to create practical and actionable meaning to change the field of counseling. A natural question might be: who is the “we” in CCMH, and how do “we” actually “complete” projects with the data collected?

The following is a summary of an article recently accepted for publication using CCMH data.

The impact of COVID-19 has led to widespread concerns about its unique effects on college students’ mental health. To examine this topic more broadly, CCMH is completing a five-part blog series using a wide range of longitudinal clinical data from students seeking mental health services at college counseling centers nationally.

The impact of COVID-19 has led to widespread concerns about its unique effects on college students’ mental health. To examine this topic more broadly, CCMH is completing a five-part blog series using longitudinal clinical data from students seeking mental health services at college counseling centers nationally.

The impact of COVID-19 has led to widespread concerns about its unique effects on college students’ mental health. To examine this topic more broadly, CCMH is completing a five-part blog series using a wide range of longitudinal clinical data from students seeking mental health services at college counseling centers nationally.

The impact of COVID-19 has led to widespread concerns about its unique effects on college student’s mental health. To examine this topic more broadly, CCMH is completing a five-part blog series using a wide range of longitudinal clinical data from students seeking mental health services at college counseling centers nationally.

The impact of COVID-19 has led to widespread concerns about its unique effects on college students' mental health. Surveys of college students conducted after March 2020 have repeatedly suggested that psychological distress among college students has increased. CCMH data, representing nearly 50,000 treatment-seeking students at 140+ institutions, suggests that the impact of COVID-19 on college students' mental health is considerably more nuanced than generally reported. To examine the impact of COVID-19 on mental health more thoroughly, using a broader range of longitudinal clinical data, CCMH will offer a five-part blog series to describe the impact of COVID-19 on college student mental health from multiple perspectives. While surveys offer an important perspective and provide an immediate snapshot of data, CCMH data is gathered methodically over time and then examined retrospectively. While this method requires patience for data to accumulate, it also provides a more robust population-level perspective (among students seeking services).

The 2020 Annual Report expands on the 2019 Annual Report that introduced the concept of the Clinical Load Index (CLI). The 2020 Annual Report provides an updated CLI distribution representing more colleges and universities and describes differences in counseling center practices at the low and high ends of the CLI distribution. 

COVID-19 has resulted in widespread concern about college-student’s mental health – both during the spring of 2020 and forecasting into the future. Recent surveys of college students have suggested that that college students’ psychological distress increased significantly following the COVID-19 response and shutdowns in March 2020. Because CCMH continuously pools national data from students seeking mental health services at college counseling centers, we were curious to see if our data support this hypothesis.