On the Tunxis campus of Connecticut State Community College, a sign in front of a building reads, "Keep going. You’ve got this!"
Inside, some students quietly pour over books.
But in a more boisterous corner, with big windows facing some red-leaved trees, the Healthy Minds Club gathers in a classroom for its regular meeting. Faculty advisor Kelly O'Brien Mann talks to the group about the importance of setting goals in order to have a sense of purpose.
"If you don't know what is it you're working for, what's meaningful to you, what does your life look like in the future?" she asks.
The club's goal is to normalize talking about mental health. It’s a support group of sorts, where students share what they’re going through.
O'Brien Mann is a professor of psychology — but she wears more hats than that.
"In any given day, we might be doing counseling on the fly, and social work, and case management, and de-escalating, and helping students just problem solve with really complicated life issues," she said.
Across the country, studies show many students struggle with mental health. In a recent survey by the Healthy Minds Network, an organization that conducts research to help guide campus policies, about one third of U.S. college students reported symptoms of moderate or severe anxiety, and roughly the same share reported symptoms of moderate or severe depression.
At Tunxis, there are usually two wellness counselors on staff to provide mental health services. O’Brien Mann would like to see more counselors there, including a nurse practitioner for medication management.
Short-term counseling services on campus are free, though O'Brien Mann said students who have more chronic mental health conditions and need consistent counseling have to look outside CT State.
"Trying to find a therapist who has availability, who takes your insurance, is a tricky thing," O’Brien Mann said.
Other professors at Tunxis like Michael Hinton have concerns about crisis services being available.
"I'm walking this student down the hall trying to keep them calm and redirect them a little bit until we can get to mental health people," Hinton explained. "And I walk into a room just, fingers crossed, hoping that there's somebody here that can help."
'Mental health is a priority'
In Connecticut, mental health resources differ across state-funded schools. The University of Connecticut — the state's flagship four-year school — employs nearly three dozen mental health professionals, who serve about 32,400 undergraduate and graduate students across its campuses.
A UConn spokesperson said the school appointed a task force in 2020 to focus on students’ mental health needs, and it has expanded services and personnel.
CT State offers one to two counselors at each of its 12 community college campuses. The system enrolled almost 38,000 full- and part-time students in fall 2026, a spokesperson said.
Like UConn, the Connecticut State Colleges and Universities system has taken steps to enhance mental health services in recent years, including by joining JED Campus, a nationwide program of The Jed Foundation that helps schools evaluate and improve their support for students.
Nevertheless, this fall, CT State Tunxis started the semester with over 5,600 enrolled students and zero wellness counselors. The two counselors on campus left in the spring, and their positions weren't filled by the start of this school year.
O’Brien Mann said it's nobody's fault — it's just how things played out. But the lack of counselors speaks to a bigger problem for students in the community college system: an unmet need for more in-person mental health services.
"It would be great to say, 'Here are the names of the two counselors, here's how you get an appointment with them,'" O'Brien Mann said. "But I think understaffing for counseling has been a problem probably for every community college."
The open jobs at Tunxis are being filled, according to Meredith Yuhas, director of mental health and wellness at CT State Community College. Staffing challenges are not a new issue, she said.
"This is the situation that we've faced continuously," Yuhas said.
Yuhas said CT State is navigating a structural deficit and other financial pressures.
To help fill the gap for students, the college provides telehealth services with staff from a third-party contractor. The counseling and crisis support is free.
Yuhas acknowledged that having in-person counselors is important, and said the community college system is evaluating the needs on each campus.
"We have to be very intentional about staffing," Yuhas said. "I think everybody agrees mental health is a priority."
The mental health staffing at Tunxis has other people concerned, like psychology student Ruth Pinto.
Pinto helped a classmate get mental health support through the college’s CARE referral system, which connects students in distress with a multidisciplinary group of campus partners, such as faculty members, the accessibility and disability coordinator, the wellness counselor and the dean of students.
"All I wanted to do was the most important thing … to save his life and to save my friend who I love," Pinto said.
Pinto also became her friend’s health proxy. But then she started struggling herself, and had a difficult time keeping up with schoolwork.
Pinto remembers walking into the former counselor’s office and breaking down when they asked a simple question: But how are you?
"And I was so stressed," Pinto said. "And I didn't realize, because I hadn't paused to think about myself."
The counselor helped Pinto get accommodations — support she didn’t realize she needed.
Community college students face more barriers
The state has studied the lack of college mental health support before. A 2021 law required Connecticut higher education institutions to assess resources on campus and identify areas of improvement.
Through its partnership with JED Campus, the state community college system launched a multi-year project to support student mental health, which included soliciting input and collecting data from students.
State Rep. Greg Haddad, a Democrat representing Mansfield who co-chairs the Higher Education Committee, said that in the last 20 years, college campuses have seen more need to provide mental health services.
"And so we see these, you know, growing budgets on college campuses to provide more services to students," Haddad said. "But the legislature's portion of the state subsidy has not been following suit."
Haddad wants the state to do more. He said it's tough because of tight controls imposed by Connecticut's fiscal guardrails — budget laws that limit growth in spending.
But investment can be meaningful to students. In one recent survey by the Association for University and College Counseling Center Directors, respondents said counseling services helped academic performance and ability to stay in school for about three quarters of clients.
For community college students, completing a degree program can make a significant difference over the course of their life. Earning an associate degree is a pathway to more job stability. Associate degree holders also earn an average of $400,000 more during their working years than people with a high school diploma alone, according to a 2002 study of U.S. Census Bureau data.
However, research shows many community college students also face more barriers to completing their education compared with students in a four-year program, such as balancing school with work and family, and paying for transportation, housing and food.
These students need different kinds of support because many come from different backgrounds than traditional four-year students, said Amy Rusch, a doctoral student at the Department of Health Behavior and Health Equity at the University of Michigan’s School of Public Health.
"The really big difference is that community college students are experiencing the same mental health crisis with fewer resources to address it," Rusch said.
Student Monika Rozsa-Horvath navigates some of those challenges. Rozsa-Horvath studies part-time in the Tunxis paralegal program. She also works at a daycare, and helps her brother, who uses a wheelchair, get to campus. Rozsa-Horvath said she sometimes sleeps only four or five hours a night to complete everything she needs to.
She said her stress levels are "through the roof."
Receiving counseling outside of CT State has been a part of her life, but she said it’s been tricky to stay on top of.
"I just started up therapy again recently because school was a lot," Rozsa-Horvath said. "I had lost my job a while back, so then I didn't have the funds to be driving from Bristol to Hartford."
Rusch said her team’s research showed community college students benefit from a coordinated continuum of care, such as teletherapy, crisis supports and in-person professional counseling.
Ruth Pinto, the psychology student who sought help, said some people need that in-person support in order to heal. Pinto said the friend she connected with campus resources recently marked six months of sobriety, a major milestone.
"I'm so proud I could cry," she said. "But it's of happiness."
Connecticut Public is part of the Mental Health Parity Collaborative, a group of newsrooms that are covering stories on mental health care access and inequities in the U.S. The partners on this project include The Carter Center and newsrooms in select states across the country.
