**1. Introduction**

Mental health disorders are a growing problem among postsecondary students in Canada [1], the USA [2, 3], United Kingdom [4], and Australia [5]. A recent Canadian study conducted by the Ontario Reference Group of the National College Health Assessment [6] 2016, in which more than 25,000 students from 20 Ontario postsecondary institutions participated, indicated that postsecondary students in Ontario are generally experiencing a decline in mental health compared to

© 2016 The Author(s). Licensee InTech. This chapter is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. © 2018 The Author(s). Licensee IntechOpen. This chapter is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

the same survey undertaken in 2013. Specifically, 46.1% of students reported feeling so depressed that it was difficult to function, 65.4% of students reported experiencing overwhelming anxiety, 14.8% of students reported experiencing tremendous stress, 13.7% of students reported having seriously considered suicide, 2.2% of students reported a suicide attempt, and 9.3% of students reported having intentionally cut, burned, bruised, or otherwise injured themselves in the previous year [7]. The comparative figures for 2013 are 40.1, 57.9, 12.7, 10.9, 1.5, and 7.5%, respectively, in 2013 [8]. These figures highlight that the rates of depression, anxiety, stress, suicidal thoughts and attempts, and self-harming behaviors are trending up among the college students. The Ontario college students study reports that students diagnosed or treated by a professional for depression and anxiety increased from 10 and 12.2% in 2013 to 14.7 and 18.4% in 2016, respectively.

from war and pre-migration traumas, which can interact with environmental factors in postsec-

Community College Counselors' Experiences and Challenges with Postsecondary Students…

http://dx.doi.org/10.5772/intechopen.75661

85

Campus counselors are responsible for providing a range of services to students. These can include long- and short-term counseling, consultation with faculty and staff, providing academic support and career counseling, and working with interns in the crisis and emergency services [17–20]. The type and scope of services they provide depend on factors like the structure of the student affairs division of the institution, the type of institution (e.g., 2-year, 4-year), budget and resources, and staff size and training [18, 20]. Counselors at community and technical colleges generally have very broad responsibilities that may include admissions, academic advising and registration, testing, teaching, consultation with faculty, career coaching and counseling, crisis and intervention, psychoeducational programming, mental health evaluation, referrals for long-term services, and individual counseling [20–22]. By contrast, counselors at 4-year institutions can provide services that are more congruent with traditional mental health counseling. These can include counseling, consultation services to faculty and staff, workshops focused on prevention and remediation, and specialist services like couples counseling [23]. Research shows that students who receive counseling services are more likely to persist and graduate within 6 years than

A review of research on the experiences of campus counselors shows that they are currently facing several challenges. First, there has been a significant increase in the number of students with mental health disorders seeking counseling services. Second, counselors are experiencing an increase in the severity of symptoms manifested by students [21, 29, 30]. Third, many campus counselors are feeling the pressure of a rapidly changing, culturally diverse, and nontraditional student population that includes older, part-time, and full-time working evening students and ethnic minorities. Traditional counseling models may not work well with these diverse student groups. Lastly, despite a significant increase in their workload, there has been no appreciable increase in the support services available from campus counseling centers [15], and counselors have "do more with less," a dynamic that can create significant challenges [31]. The situation is worse in community colleges [15]. As highlighted by Much et al., "over the years campus counseling services have become stretched because of diminishing financial resources, shifting accountabilities, and intensifying scrutiny on the part of governing boards,

Given the enormous challenges that campus counselors are facing, the aim of this study is to examine how they are dealing with these and the kinds of support they need. This study specifically focuses on the challenges faced by community college counselors. This is because community colleges are vastly underrepresented in much of the study on college student mental health [33–35]. Further, compared to universities, community colleges receive far less funding to provide counseling support services [22, 36, 37], despite evidence that community

ondary institutions and impact academic performance [2].

**2.2. Experiences and challenges of campus counselors**

those who do not [24–28].

policy makers, and the public" [32].

**2.3. The current study**

With increasing numbers of students experiencing mental health disorders and the growing social acceptance of counseling as an intervention that can be helpful for people struggling with mental health as well as developmental and life issues, college counselors are experiencing a significant upsurge in the number of students who are seeking out campus counseling services [9, 10]. In this context, it is important to understand how campus counselors are responding and the challenges they are facing in providing best practice counseling and support in all aspects of their work.
