Examining the effectiveness of campus counseling for college students with disabilities

Campus counseling centers, which oversee the provision of mental health services, can play a vital role in supporting positive outcomes among college students in general; however, little remains known about the effectiveness of campus-based counseling for reducing academic and psychological distress among college students with disabilities. The purpose of the current study was to examine the effectiveness of individual campus-based counseling for students with disabilities and to determine whether the effectiveness of counseling varied by student disability status. Data for the present study were gathered by the Center for Collegiate Mental Health from the 2016-2019 academic years. Participants consisted of help-seeking students with only psychiatric disabilities (n = 643), students with disabilities other than only psychiatric disabilities (n = 3,833), and students without a disability (n = 54,576). Results indicated that students with disabilities demonstrated significantly fewer reductions in levels of psychological and academic distress than their nondisabled peers, and analyses further revealed variation by disability type. These findings advance our understanding of the effectiveness of campus counseling services for improving pertinent outcomes among help-seeking college students with disabilities. Implications for clinical practice, theory, and future research are discussed. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2021 APA, all rights reserved).