Greetings: Week of Feb. 6

This week on CU-CitizenAccess.org, a website and social network devoted to coverage and discussion of social and economic issues within Central Illinois:

Campus lacks resources to meet demand for mental health services, safety initiatives

For the past five months, journalism students and faculty have examined the state of mental health treatment at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign campus.

Their work was part of an examination of mental health programs conducted by the Investigative Journalism Education Consortium, a network of journalism faculty and students at Midwest universities and colleges that is funded by the Robert R. McCormick Foundation based in Chicago. (Read project here)

In their ongoing review, the students found the campus is unable to meet national standard for the counselor to student ratio. They also found that recommended safety measures following campus shootings at Northern Illinois University and Virginia Tech have not been met or are being slowly implemented.

More than 10,000 students on the Illinois campus seek help from counseling center, which has 20 full-time counselors. Many have serious problems and more than 60 attempted suicide last year.

Read more: 

University campus struggle to meet growing demand for mental health services

The University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign is seeing more demand for mental health services but is struggling to meet that demand.

More of the university’s students are on psychiatric medication and more students are diagnosed with severe issues such as depression and anxiety than in years past.

Lack of evacuation plans leaves students, staff unprepared

By Mary Beth Versaci/ Of the approximately 450 buildings on the University of Illinois campus, only 75 have Building Emergency Action Plans completed or in progress. This means that a little more than 16 percent have evacuation plans in place in the event of an emergency.

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