The Importance of Enhancing Financial Support for Students’ Mental Health

In 2024, the Ministry of Health and Welfare initiated a new mental health program called the “National Mental Health Investment Support Program.” It is a program designed to bolster mental healthcare infrastructure in Korea, with the goal of reducing depression and anxiety rates. Korea has the highest anxiety rate among OECD countries, and university students are far from immune to this trend. According to the 2023 CNU Mental Health Survey, about 34 percent of respondents had at least "moderate anxiety," while 11 percent had "high" or "very high" anxiety. Recognizing the troubling importance of these figures, the Chonnam Tribune delved into whether current support from the university, specifically through its counseling services, is sufficient to meet students' mental health needs.

University Counseling Services

CNU has the Student Counseling Center in the Student Union 1 building. It has professional counselors who can help students cope with anxiety. Counseling services are divided into personal and group counseling. Personal counseling is conducted individually with one counselor per student. Group counseling involves approximately 10 people gathered based on similar types of anxiety. Group members share their experiences with peers, enabling them to learn from and empathize with others as well as to feel less alone in their struggles.

Apart from these counseling services, the center offers a helpful array of resources, including yoga and meditation-based stress management programs, smartphone and gambling addiction rehabilitation programs, and diverse psychological testing services. In 2023, 218 students attended personal counseling, 5,527 students took psychology tests, and 1,765 students participated in education programs. The survey further reported that more than 83 percent of respondents intended to visit the center if they needed professional help, while more than 90 percent of respondents who had utilized the center's services reported satisfaction with their experiences there. The center therefore appears to making a substantial positive impact on students' wellness.

Issues with the Current System

Despite their satisfaction with the services provided, students often have a long wait prior to receiving counseling. The center does not have enough rooms or counselors to meet the student body's growing demand for them. Sun Jin (Counselor, Student Counseling Center) said, “During exam weeks and beginning of each semester, the volume of students applying counseling services exceeds our capacity to provide them, so applicants have to wait up to a month for appointments.” The center only has four personal counseling rooms serving a university with more than20,000 students, a ratio which is proving to be quite insufficient. On top of that, the center relies heavily on temporarily employed counselors, meaning there is a high turnover rate. Of the 14 counselors employed there, only four are permanent, leading to constant turnover that deprives many students of the stable counseling relationships required to make sustainable progress in coping with depression, anxiety, and other mental health issues.

In addition, the center just initiated a program to provide online English counseling services for international students on Nov. 8. Prior to November, only the Graduate School offered online English counseling services for international graduate students. Umarov Vakhidjonovich (Senior, Dept. of Faculty of Business Administration) said, "I did not know such counseling services were offered by our university. I think counseling in foreign languages not only should be available but rather needs to be offered to meaningfully support international students." In fact, the center already posted a job opening for an English-speaking counselor multiple times on their website, but it has been to no avail Instead, they decided to offer online English counseling services to follow the graduate school’s lead.

Insufficient Financial Support

The university’s financial support for the center is neither sufficient nor stable. More than 90 percent of the budget for the center is from the National University Development Project, a government program primarily designed to help public universities increase their competitiveness. This project administered via a yearly contract, whose budget allotments change every year. Some years more support is given, and in some years it is less. These unpredictable budgetary fluctuations are why the university has to rely upon temporary counselors; it's impossible to know how many will be able to remain on staff each new fiscal year. Any university's ability to sufficiently protect its students' mental health under such conditions is questionable.

Also, the university’s criteria for the center’s budgeting are unclear. Budget allotments, including those for indispensable services such as counseling, should be determined by transparent, publicly available procedures rather than the personal opinions of university administrators. In this respect, Jeong Ju-ri (Professor, Dept. of Education), managing director of the Student Counseling Center, noted, “The current budget system is quite strange. The budget depends too heavily on the whims of rotating university administrators. It fluctuates whenever a high-ranking official is replaced. It almost feels like students' mental health is not one of the university’s priorities.”

Toward Better Counseling Services

The benefits of counseling are numerous and well established. Prof. Jeong said, “People who receive counseling show scientifically proven benefits to their psychological health. Though medications may be able to relieve certain symptoms through neurotransmitter modulation, counseling focuses on the process of resolving problems that cause mental health symptoms.” Thus, the university needs to increase its financial commitment to resolving the student counseling center's budgetary issues in order to provide adequate mental health services for its students. Enhancing the quality of counseling services will help students attain greater academic success and, more importantly, help them live happier and healthier lives, leading to a brighter future for the whole CNU community.

By Kim Jong-hyo, Reporter