If a student struggles at Choate, she is sometimes left with no alternative but to seek help. Still, many students opt out of going to counseling. Why is that? After all, the counseling department seems incredibly accessible. The counselors are on the second floor of the Pratt Health Center, and students need only make an appointment before receiving help. If a student struggles at Choate, she is sometimes left with no alternative but to seek help. Still, many students opt out of going to counseling. Why is that? After all, the counseling department seems incredibly accessible. The counselors are on the second floor of the Pratt Health Center, and students need only make an appointment before receiving help.
Despite this simple configuration, however, many still struggle to get the help they need. Students’ reluctance to get counseling has less to do with the surface-level factors — the location and accessibility of the counseling office — and more to do with the student body’s overall impression of the counseling department.
Particularly, there is the ego-related aspect of seeking mental support that seems to place one at a disadvantage when compared to his or her peers; some worry that their need for help makes them “weaker” or “less than.” These associations are clearly detrimental to both the psyche of students and to the mission of the counseling office.
Furthermore, boarding students struggle with the possibility of parental involvement in seeking counseling. When the topic of counseling comes up in conversation, the issue of maintaining confidentiality from parents is almost always brought up.
My friend once mentioned, “the reason why I haven’t sought out counseling is because I don’t want my parents finding out.” While my friend had considered the possibility of getting help, she decided against it after realizing that her parents could be informed. Another friend said that they would continue to visit the counseling department if their parents knew, but they would rather have their parents uninformed.
It would be in the counseling office’s best interest to increase transparency about what seeking mental health support entails. Are our parents legally required to know if we go to counseling? What is the extent to which parents must be informed? Where can we find such information?
None of the people whom I asked seemed to know the answer — yet, information like this is essential when students decide whether to seek help.
The mental health of the student body is far from stellar. Few of my friends eat three full meals a day — most seem to just eat lunch and dinner. We struggle with time management and find ourselves flooded with overwhelmingly difficult work. We face outrageous amounts of homework. Typical high school drama is amplified in a boarding school environment.
You’re not going to go a day at Choate without hearing the phrase: “I want to kill myself.” Although the context is almost always separate from the phrase’s literal interpretation, one still wonders what this says about our school’s environment.
These problems need to be addressed by the counseling office. Programs like Peer Educators and the Assessment Team serve as support for these issues, but our peers can only help so much.
We can only hope for improvements. You should consider seeking help if you know that your mental health is struggling.
Unfortunately, the issue of confidentiality still looms over any decision to seek help. The counseling office has made an oversight that is severely affecting the students who want to seek help. Students at Choate must be able to ask for help — but it’s difficult if the counseling office isn’t transparent about what this means.
