Everything Around the Appointment

The Center for Collegiate Mental Health released its 2026 Annual Report this month, covering the 2025–26 academic year: 200 counseling centers, mostly in the U.S., and 164,380 students in care. The report is the closest thing that higher ed has to a national read on the students seeking counseling and the concerns that bring them in, and this year’s iteration opens with good news. CCMH will walk through the findings in a free webinar on October 27 at noon Eastern (registration here).

Students who book with their campus counseling center get seen quickly. About a third were seen for their first appointment of the year on the day that they scheduled it, and 82% within five business days. Every distress score that students report when they start counseling decreased from the year before. Counseling centers deserve credit for that, which they rarely receive.

With most students seen within a week of booking, the data suggest that the larger gaps and opportunities now sit outside the session: some in how students reach support at all, and some in what happens around and after care.

Before the first appointment

On the average campus, about 10% of enrolled students attended at least one campus counseling center appointment last year.

The concerns bringing students in are changing. Among students in care, stress and relationship problems have been climbing as top concerns since 2020–21, and, notably, social anxiety demonstrates the largest 16-year increase of any distress area that CCMH monitors. Beyond the counseling center, a national Lumina and Gallup survey found that one in three U.S. students considered stopping out of college in the past six months, with emotional stress and mental health leading the drivers, even ahead of cost. Eighty-two percent say that they feel emotional stress at least sometimes.

Campus leaders also inform us anecdotally, with remarkable consistency, that more and more students avoid making phone calls, including those that book appointments, and that some arrive less practiced at the everyday conversations that college life and beyond require. Students are reaching out in other ways. Nearly one in four U.S. young adults ages 18 to 21 have used AI chatbots for mental health advice, whether general-purpose (e.g., ChatGPT and Gemini) or companion (e.g., Character.AI), and most young people who do have not told anyone.

Much of Wayhaven’s work resides in that before-the-door (virtual or physical) stretch, if you will. At one partner campus this fall, first-year students used it to figure out how to get around campus, how to meet people (including finding a club or event that fit their interests), and, in a handful of cases, how to do laundry. Small questions, perhaps, but each one is part of whether a new campus starts to feel like home. While not every concern needs a clinician, each needs somewhere to go, whether that’s an advisor, a case manager, an RA, a club, or the counseling center.

Getting to the right door

Many campuses purchase support from outside partners. Nearly half of CCMH member centers (47%) contract with a vendor for individual counseling, and about half (52%) for crisis services. Far fewer contract with outside help for referral services (13%) or coaching (5%), although 42% have in-house staff focused on community referrals.

A contracted service helps only the students who are aware that it exists and who take the first step toward engaging with it. The first step is a behavioral challenge as much as an informational one. A large body of research on implementation intentions shows that people follow through more often when they’ve planned when, where, and how they’ll act, including if-then plans for obstacles that might get in the way. Some students also need help with the step itself, like knowing what to say in the email or on the phone. Wayhaven helps students plan that step and, when needed, draft what to say.

At Butler University, students had 6,748 engagements with Wayhaven’s AI coaches in the first year, including 456 referrals to campus clubs, events, and on-campus resources. In an internal survey of our student users, 84% of those who received a campus referral acted on it or planned to.

Once students are in care

About one in seven booked appointments resulted in a no-show or a student-initiated cancellation, and group therapy and workshops had the lowest attendance of any appointment type, at 65% and 59%. The most common reason that counseling cases closed was the end of the academic term, cited for 45% of closed cases. The single most common number of appointments per student was one, at 22%. For some of those students, one visit may have been what they needed. For others, it may have been as far as they got . . . and the data doesn’t tell us which.

Some campuses refer students out for continued care with providers at home or in the community. Support in the weeks after a last session, however, especially across a winter or summer break, remains an open question for wellbeing and student affairs leaders, their care partners, and counseling teams, and one that merits closer inspection. Wayhaven is available to students any time for everyday stressors, and points them back to campus resources when they need more.

The upshot

Campus counseling is in better shape than the older headlines may have suggested, which is heartening. Much of the credit belongs to the counseling centers doing the work, and to the 200 that shared their data so that the rest of us might learn from it. The next gains may very well come from outside the session: some from wellbeing and student affairs leaders, their care partners, and counseling teams working on what happens around and after care, and some from helping students find the right campus resource, plan the first step, and take it. To learn more about how Wayhaven helps campuses with that last part, book a 30-minute intro call.

References

Center for Collegiate Mental Health. (2026, October). 2026 annual report (Publication No. STA 26-544). Penn State University.

Gollwitzer, P. M., & Sheeran, P. (2006). Implementation intentions and goal achievement: A meta-analysis of effects and processes. Advances in Experimental Social Psychology, 38, 69–119.

Lumina Foundation & Gallup. (2026). State of higher education 2026.

McBain, R. K., Cantor, J. H., Breslau, J., et al. (2026). AI chatbot use and disclosure for mental health among US adolescents and young adults. JAMA Pediatrics. https://doi.org/10.1001/jamapediatrics.2026.2015

Survey data: Wayhaven internal program evaluation (2026), unpublished.