Mental Health on college campuses was not really discussed until the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. In 1861, Edward Hitchcock founded the first college health program in the United States at Amherst College in Massachusetts. Hitchcock believed in the “philosophy of mens sana in corpore sano, a sound mind in a sound body,” (Amherst.edu) which fueled his passion for ensuring students were staying healthy while furthering their education. Hitchcock had attended Amherst himself and graduated in 1849 and became a physician after graduating Harvard Medical School in 1853. Exercise programs were incorporated into a student’s daily life to improve physical health along with emotional health as well, however, other than that, there was no other support such as counseling being provided.
About fifty years later in 1910, psychiatrist Stewart Paton MD, established the first mental health-specific services for college students at Princeton University. Though this was not a preventative action, as there were observations made that students at the university were not fully completing their coursework due to the socio-emotional struggles resulting from the intense programs. Paton’s programs sparked the movement across the United States as the University of Wisconsin followed in 1914, Kansas based Washburn College in 1920, the US Military Academy at West Point in 1920, Dartmouth College in 1921, Vassar College in 1923 and Yale University in 1925.
A national set of standards for mental health in colleges was not set until the first-ever “National Conference on Health In Colleges” was held in Syracuse in 1931. Nonetheless, seven years later, at the second conference, a study was conducted that showed out of “479 schools…although 93% viewed mental hygiene as an important need, only 42% had already engaged a psychiatrist consultant.” A similar study conducted for the third conference in 1947 showed little to no improvements. Some argued that this was because officials were calling for certified psychiatrists to be running these programs and there were not enough. Therefore, it was suggested that certified psychiatrists take on the more severe cases and have other qualified professionals counsel the rest.
In 1961, the very first version of the American College Health Association’s (ACHA) “Recommended Standards and Practices for a College Health Program,” which outlined the standards for not only mental health but general college health services to make sure colleges were following the proper protocols. While the ACHA formed a Mental Hygiene Committee in 1954 and had only forty-three members three years later, by 2007 there were 192 members. Though college mental health programs are not perfect, there are now hundreds of programs existing to support college students across the United States.
When looking at a college present day, almost every single one will have a counseling center. This goes to show how moving and influential the. history mentioned above was. There is definitely still room for improvement as far as the quality of certain programs go, however, at least having them available to students is a huge bonus.