EDUCATION

NJ program to offer free telehealth counseling for college students

2-minute read

Mary Ann Koruth
NorthJersey.com

With mental health crises on the rise among teenagers, the state is partnering with a private firm to introduce a telehealth counseling service that provides free, online therapy to students enrolled at 44 public and private higher education institutions in New Jersey, Gov. Phil Murphy's office announced Tuesday.

The partnership between the state and Uwill, an online campus counseling service founded in 2020 in response to the COVID-19 pandemic, is funded with COVID relief aid from the American Rescue Plan and will provide students with access to free virtual mental health services.

The program, available 24 hours a day, every day of the year, was created to address "a rapidly growing need" for counseling and mental health support that "has strained the capacity of many campuses," the governor's office said in a statement. The participating institutions opted into the program and include the three Rutgers University campuses, community colleges in Bergen and Passaic county, Princeton University and Montclair State University.

“Making teletherapy services available to countless college students on campuses throughout our state is a key component of our ongoing efforts to address the mental health needs of our young people and promote safe and inclusive learning environments in New Jersey," Murphy said.

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The program is funded entirely by $10 million allocated to the Office of the Secretary of Higher Education for virtual mental health support in the state’s fiscal year 2023 budget. Participating colleges and universities can complement the program through separate initiatives funded by grant money awarded to them by the state for mental health programming from a total pool of $16 million in American Rescue Plan funds set aside for this purpose in the budget.

Several campuses have already begun delivering telehealth counseling through the program, which was launched April 1. The Murphy administration has contracted UWill, which it said was the lowest bidding vendor in a call for quotes, to provide services at a cost of $4 million for the first year, with the option to renew the contract twice for one-year periods.

Mental toll of the pandemic

The Joint Committee for Public Schools invited superintendents and advocates to a Zoom meeting  to discuss the impact of losing school based mental health services on Oct 19, 2022.

The program was crafted in response to a 2021 questionnaire circulated among 15,500 undergraduate and graduate students at 60 higher education institutions by the Office of the Secretary of Higher Education to assess the mental and economic toll of the pandemic.

Over 70% of New Jersey students rated higher stress and anxiety levels compared with the previous year. And 40% of students were concerned about their mental health related to the pandemic.

State and federal agencies have noted that mental health, particularly among youth, needed to be prioritized during and after the pandemic because school and college closures, economic and health effects on families, and increasing social media use exposed students to additional stress.

The program is part of Murphy's initiative to prioritize youth mental health as head of the National Governors Association.

Not feeling connected

Suicidal ideation among teenage girls rose after the pandemic and stayed about the same for teenage boys, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention found in a study conducted in 2021.

And nearly 40% of all U.S. high school students reported that they did not feel connected to others at school, the agency said in April. School connectedness has a critical link to "risk behaviors and adverse experiences among adolescents," the study reported, with impacts that affect their lives and health as adults.