I am calling on Yale to lower therapy wait times and meet patient preferences for therapists because anything less would continue to perpetuate Yale’s violent negligence of students with disabilities. When students come to Yale, they become dependent on the University for our most basic needs: food, housing, health and community. But when Yale treats social and emotional wellness as an accessory to health, instead of an integral aspect of bodily fitness, neuro-atypical and trauma inflicted students are made vulnerable to institutionalization. They are also unsupported in sharing their insights, work and selves with our community, an incalculable loss for New Haven, the college and their peers.
If students are expected to entrust this institution with our health and wellbeing, then Yale MUST do better; especially given that the landscape of healthcare in New Haven is dominated by the Yale Corporation, students need better, more restorative, and representative mental health services made accessible to them by the University. Yale cannot expect us to settle for library visits from service dogs as the bedrock of their mental health program.
And the summer of 2020 has only made it obvious how necessary trauma informed education is. Any other kind of approach to healthcare and curriculum is absolutely insufficient and actively harmful.
