Students seeking mental health help kicked out of colleges to prevent ‘bad PR’ [RawStory.com]

This kind of discrimination occurs in k-12 education as well.  Mental illness is not viewed by the school as a disability which warrants special education services the way any other disability would.  A child with a physical disability or chronic health condition, or a learning disability would be entitled to protections under ADA and IDEA.  Well, guess what?  So is a child with a mental illness disorder.  That goes for college too.  Most people do not realize this.  Every college has its own version of Disabled Student Services Department which provides the college equivalent of special education services to college students.  These are federally protected rights to services.  They are provided under a signed, contract/plan between the school and the student, similar to an IEP.  These Disabled Student Services Plans are available to students with physical disorders, learning disorders, and mental illness disorders which impact learning.  I'm not surprised that colleges do not mention to students seeking counseling that they may be entitled to these special education services to assist them in school and protect them from being pushed out of school for missing classes due to their disability while they are getting stabilized on a new treatment regimen.  Because these services provide the students with protections and cost the school money.  Why would the school volunteer this information?  But now that I've told you all, you need to get the word out so that college students with special needs have an equal chance to succeed as all other college students.  It should not be a secret.  It should be mandatory that colleges provide this information to all students.  But that would cost far too much money because far too many students would qualify for service plans than colleges are willing or able to pay.   

With the current cost of tuition, and student loan interest, one would think our college's counseling services could offer a reasonable array of services.

During my undergraduate term, one of my professors referred me to the college counseling department. In the program I was in, a sizable number of undergrads writing their [required] thesis experienced what our Psychologist/Dean referred to as "Dissertation Psychosis". I met with a member of the College Counseling department, who was also a Viet Nam Veteran. He made the point of telling me: "You were in Attica and I was in Viet Nam. We both Cheated death!"

When the VA opened up their PTSD study of Non-military personnel, some years later, I participated, and finally had a diagnostic construct that took my experiences into consideration, and a start of an understanding of how those experiences had affected my life, on "anniversary dates", during "flashbacks", on my "work history", etc.

I'm glad my college counseling department didn't send me to a "psych ward". Our undergrad program changed the "Thesis Requirement", to a "Project in Community Development" and the incidence of "Dissertation Psychosis" dropped to zero.