When you’re financially unstable on campus, you’re constantly wanting to seek help but it’s hard to balance with working and academics. Given Yale’s reputation with mental health services, it doesn’t even seem worth it to try to access them.

My dad is out of work, and my mom has had her wages cut. She’s also an essential worker and is at risk for contracting COVID-19. We don’t have the best healthcare, so it’s really stressful to think about how what we would do if she got sick. Dealing with finances at Yale is really stressful. Sometimes it gets so complicated that I just try not to think about it, but it’s always in the back of my mind. When you’re financially unstable on campus, you’re constantly wanting to seek help but it’s hard to balance with working and academics. Given Yale’s reputation with mental health services, it doesn’t even seem worth it to try to access them. By not prioritizing mental health in where Yale directs its resources, Yale is telling its students that mental health is not important. Yale has a $34 billion endowment and so it doesn’t make any sense for them to neglect the mental health needs of their students. If there were better quality mental health services on campus, I would definitely seek them out. There’s no excuse for Yale to not provide these resources for their students, especially the most vulnerable.