In an effort to improve its services to students in poor mental health, UNC recently announced a new hotline that will connect them directly to a mental health professional.

The new resource of UNC’s Counseling and Psychological Services, or CAPS, came at the recommendation from the university’s Mental Health Task Force. The 24/7 crisis support line will be accessible using CAPS’ current phone line and connects those calling to counselors at ProtoCall, a 24-hour hotline that provides around-the-clock mental health support.

Allen O’Barr, the director of CAPS, says the service is meant to be for students in need of support or crisis intervention outside of CAPS’ regular business hours.

“We were not really providing as good of a service as we could have provided and are now providing through ProtoCall,” says O’Barr. “The benefit of this service is that we have mental health counselors available after [business] hours for students to call directly. That’s really the state-of-the-art treatment for students in distress.”

Many campuses use 24/7 crisis support lines as a method for helping students cope with mental health problems. Interim Vice Chancellor for Student Affairs Jonathan Sauls says UNC regularly examines how other schools are addressing students’ mental health, and the new hotline is no different. He also says that any after-hours call to ProtoCall will not go unaddressed by CAPS’ staff. The hotline professional will record notes that are sent to CAPS to access the following day.

Sauls says CAPS will still have an on-call staff member for more immediate mental health emergencies.

“If there’s some more urgent crisis that requires some in-person care,” he says, “CAPS will continue to have an on-call person that can have dialogue with that provider, and we can facilitate some in-person care as well.”

The Mental Health Task Force was created in the spring of 2018 by former Vice Chancellor for Student Affairs Winston Crisp and Executive Vice Chancellor and Provost Bob Blouin. They championed the task force as a method to address mental health care needs of UNC students amidst a growing awareness of mental health struggles throughout higher education. The group submitted nearly 60 recommendations to the university in April, one suggesting to “improve accessibility and ease of navigability” of the CAPS model.

O’Barr says a variety of reasons are causing the need for more accessibility and the overall rise in mental health treatment for students.

“Clearly, there has been a decrease in stigma,” he says. “There has also been an increase in distress over the last five to 10 years. We’ve seen that not just in college counseling centers but globally and nationally.”

UNC says it will aim to implement other recommendations from the Mental Health Task Force in the coming months and years.

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