While many college students are home for the summer, some who cross state lines between home and school are struggling to navigate a complex mental health system.
Namely, New York state doesn’t allow for inter-state telehealth therapy, and college students are particularly vulnerable to falling through the cracks.
It’s something Fairport graduate Sean Waddington has seen himself. He currently attends Boston University.
“I struggled a lot my first semester. I tried to do my best, but there were a lot of failures,” Waddington said. “I was having a lot of mental health issues.”
He decided to seek therapy, expecting that the biggest hurdle would be accepting help – but it wasn’t.
"I found a therapist in Boston who was nearby, knew college students,” he said. “And what happened was, when I came back home, I wasn't allowed to see her because ... my therapist wasn't licensed to practice in New York.”
Even though more people are accessing healthcare remotely with telehealth, licensing requirements vary from state-to-state, and New York restrictions prevent patients from seeing therapists across state lines.
It’s one of 10 states that impose such restrictions, according to the Psychology Interjurisdictional Compact Commission, which is responsible for granting authority to mental health providers to practice across boundaries of participating states.
A chance encounter
As luck would have it, Waddington met the New York state senator who chairs the state’s first mental health committee, Samra Brouk (D-Rochester), at an event last year.
“I was just, like, you know, at a parade once and I was talking to her about it,” he said. "Hopefully, we can get some legislation on it. But yeah, not everyone's as lucky as that to be able to just talk to our state senator.”
Brouk said it’s something her team is looking into with insights from a statewide Youth Mental Health Advisory Board — not just for students who are seeking a therapist, but also those whose mental health care is interrupted when they go away to college.
“You're already leaving your physical supports, the place that's familiar to you," Brouk said. You're going across — out of state, you know, big move to go to school and now you've lost this one lifeline that you've had, right? Of talking to your therapist.”
A possible solution?
Outside of the state senate mental health committee, there was an effort to change this. Republican State Senator Robert Ortt introduced a bill last May that would have, in part, permitted interstate counseling.
It was referred to the Senate Higher Education Committee where it stalled.
In a statement, Ortt called it common sense legislation that “would fill the void of much needed mental health workers faced by our state.”
But not everyone is on board with that specific bill. State Sen. Toby Ann Stavisky (D-Whitestone), chair of the higher education committee, said as a rule she is reluctant to advance legislation to enter into interstate compacts.
But she added there are "always exceptions to the rules."
“We want to be sure that the patient — it's a consumer issue as far as I'm concerned — that they're receiving the best possible care from somebody who is licensed to provide that care,” she said.
The bill didn’t come to her attention until now, Stavisky said, because there was neither discussion nor any request to move the bill out of the committee.
However, looking at it now, she believes the bill itself is too broad.
“It talks not only about licensure for the counselors, but also for the psychologists, but also for EMS (Emergency Medical Services), and those are very different areas," she said. “I'm very concerned about low — about lowering the standards that we have in New York state.”
Republican Assemblymember Brian Miller sponsored a matching bill in the Assembly, which also stalled.
Meanwhile, the state legislature is out of session until January, and election campaigns are underway. So, it is unlikely that local students whose home and school are in different states will see that barrier lifted during this upcoming school year.
But Waddington has faith that future students could see that change.
"Turns out getting therapy is really hard, especially for college students,” Waddington said. “I'm really hopeful that it'll get changed in the next few years.”
