About a fifth of students visiting Mercer’s Office of Counseling and Psychological Services have sought counseling specifically because of the coronavirus pandemic’s impact on their life, data kept by CAPS shows, underscoring the additional mental health challenges COVID-19 has caused at colleges across the nation.
“The anxiety that is associated with COVID whether they are a student or not has put us at a different baseline,” said Emily Piassick, director of CAPS. Piassick holds a doctoral degree in counseling psychology. “I’m not sure we have ever experienced anything like what we are experiencing right now within most of our lifetimes.”