Student Health

Student health and wellbeing is paramount to the success, happiness, and wellbeing of our students. We’ve identified substantial problems in our mental health services, and our universities current work on Sexual Violence and Sexual Harrasement (SVSH). We propose extensive policy proposals to address both of these issues.

Mental Health:

Counseling and Psychological Services (CAPS) at UC Berkeley has a mission to provide comprehensive support for students' emotional, psychological, educational, social, and cultural development. Despite this mission, there have been notable shortcomings in accessibility and effectiveness. Historically, CAPS offered walk-in services for career counseling, but this has transitioned to scheduled appointments, causing inconvenience for students. The Career Counseling Library, once readily accessible, now operates virtually with limited availability. Individual meetings, crucial for personalized support, require 24-hour advance scheduling, hindering immediate assistance. Furthermore, drop-in consultations, though labeled as such, necessitate appointments made within the week, constraining timely access. With a meager count of 26 counselors for a vast student population, long waiting periods for counseling are commonplace. Additionally, the availability of therapy sessions, both virtual and in-person, remains limited, leaving students with constrained options and long wait times. Group counseling, while offered, demands significant effort from students to secure participation, with no guarantee of acceptance. The process for couples counseling is similarly burdensome, with ambiguous timelines for response and scheduling. Despite efforts to provide support through various channels, CAPS' inefficiencies in accessibility and responsiveness have resulted in significant challenges for students seeking mental health services.

For students seeking long-term therapy, CAPS offers resources such as the referral database, containing names of clinicians interested in working with UC Berkeley students. This database allows students to search for providers based on their insurance plan. Additionally, SHIP members have access to Teladoc, enabling video visits with licensed therapists or psychologists from anywhere. Students with SHIP insurance can also utilize Wellfleet Member Services or the Blue Shield of California PPO network to locate in-network providers. UHS Counselors assist students in finding off-campus providers compatible with their healthcare plan. Those with other insurance plans can use their provider's resources to locate counseling services and utilize the CAPS referral database as needed. Despite these resources, challenges in accessing affordable and appropriate long-term therapy persist for students at UC Berkeley. In addition, it's important to note the financial challenges faced by mental health providers in collaborating with SHIP and its partners. According to Weksler, UC Berkeley's current and past student medical insurance partners, including Anthem and Aetna, have only reimbursed providers around 50 percent of their regular full fee. With the transition to Blue Shield, providers anticipate even lower reimbursement rates, making it financially unfeasible for many to offer more than one or two therapy slots per week for students, especially considering the high cost of living in the area. This financial strain further exacerbates the existing difficulties in accessing timely and affordable mental health care for UC Berkeley students.

There is so much that can be done. All we need is your support.

Background:

The Counseling and Psychological Services (CAPS) at UC Berkeley aims to provide comprehensive support for students' emotional, psychological, educational, social, and cultural development. However, despite this mission, there have been notable shortcomings in accessibility and effectiveness.

Different Counseling Types:

Issues Present:

Objectives:

Policy Recommendations:

Counseling and Psychological Services (CAPS):

Overview of CAPS:

CAPS provides free counseling for students regardless of their insurance plan. All the resources provided require students to plan in advance.

Sexual Safety:

Context:

In recent years, there has been a problematic increase in sexual violence and sexual harassment on the UC Berkeley campus- a problem which has largely gone unaddressed by ASUC and admin at large.

Stories about sexual assault cases going into the bureaucratic void are only increasing, and it is clear that there is a distinct lack of transparency that inflicts unneeded stress on already overwhelmed victims. In addition, victims deal with the same problems with counseling: meetings at most every 2 weeks, when their needs need to be addressed not only fast but consistently.

The UCPD website says the increase in sexual violence reports is likely inflation due to the return to in person instruction, and in addition that the increase “reflects individuals feeling more confident in reporting incidents of SVSH, not necessarily an increase in SVSH incidents occurring”. This is dismissive of the problem at large.

And regardless of the truth of this statement, 597 SVSH reports were filed in 2022-23 at just the Office for the Prevention of Harassment and Discrimination, which is an increase from 471 in 2021-22, 272 in 2020-21, and 446 in 2017-18. Change needs to be made, but as of late there is nothing being done. Looking at even the most recent historical actions done in the past, it is immediately striking that not a single historical- and thus substantive- change has been done since 2017 (https://svsh.berkeley.edu/historical-campus-actions). The last facebook post from the ASUC Sexual Violence Commission was in 2021.

So nothing has been done yet the number rises.

Issues Present:

Objectives:

Policy Proposals: