Student-Parent Coalition Wants Penn To Get Serious About Mental Health Issues

By Kim Glovas

PHILADELPHIA (CBS) -- A group of students and parents wants the University of Pennsylvania to offer more mental health counseling to students after seven suicides were reported in two years.

The group calls itself the Hamlett-Reed Mental Health Initiative after two of the suicide victims.

For a lot of administrators, mental health issues is students who are potentially suicidal, or students who face suicidal thoughts or clinical depression," says the Initiative's David Cahn. "Whereas as students, we define mental health more broadly, as this idea of wellness, as this idea of anxiety, of stress, that really pervades the campus."

Cahn says the coalition met with some administrators recently, calling for scheduled counseling sessions for students.

"I made a comment at one point that 100-percent of Penn students face mental health issues, obviously to very different levels of severity," he says. "But we know that surveys show that the majority of students say they have severe anxiety across America. And my comment about all students facing these issues was met with laughs from the audience, which is really something I didn't expect."

Administrators agreed to get back to the coalition about a timeline for counseling. But calls to the Penn and it's Vice Provost of Student Life about the issue were not returned.

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