UW-Eau Claire named to The Princeton Review's 2027 Mental Health Services Honor Roll

“It is a great honor. Mental health is something we really value here,” says Dr. Riley McGrath, psychologist and director of Counseling Services. “We’ve known that we have a strong center, but it’s nice to get it recognized in a national setting.”

UW-Eau Claire offers its students free and confidential short-term solution-based services and bolsters them with additional Universities of Wisconsin resources. Help on campus for mental health, substance misuse and suicide prevention is available through appointments, assessments, screenings, trainings and individual and group therapy sessions.

Students in need of immediate crisis services can utilize drop-in appointments each weekday or through the UW 24/7 Mental Health support line. Online tools include Mantra Health, a 24/7 crisis line, and Togetherall, an anonymous, peer-to-peer mental health support community available anytime.

McGrath says UW-Eau Claire has one of the best staffing ratios among UW schools, with 11 full-time employees and 19 total clinicians contributing to student care. This broader clinical team includes six graduate-level interns and part-time clinicians who help expand the center’s capacity to serve students.

That robust team allowed Counseling Services to see 13.5% of the student body for more than 7,000 appointments, both record levels, during the 2025-26 academic year. Clinicians on staff have “a hunger for learning” to continue to expand offerings McGrath says, showcased by monthly internal trainings.

McGrath also gives credit to campus partners for serving students, including Student Health Service, Services for Students with Disabilities, the Office of Health Promotion and Housing and Residence Life.

“It has to be a campuswide initiative,” McGrath says. “That’s certainly where we’re at and I’m certainly proud of that.”

Christy Prust, health educator for the Office of Health Promotion, leads peer-involvement mental health promotions on campus. She says everyone at UW-Eau Claire recognizes the importance mental health and physical health have on students' success.

“Academics and health and wellness do not live in silos. They have to work together,” Prust says. “I hear from other folks on other campuses saying, ‘We don’t have these things; how are you doing them? It’s awesome work that you do.’”

Prust employs and supervises students to carry out UW-Eau Claire’s Suicide Prevention and Research Collaboration program initiatives, which include McIntrye Library’s Rest Nest and Green Bandana Project. Prust also supervises the Student Wellness Advocacy Team, a group of peer health educators who facilitate events, programs and classes about health and wellness topics like alcohol and other drug misuse, sexual health and opioid overdose prevention.

SPARC also guides campus through the Lifesavers Suicide Prevention Program, which informs people how to recognize if someone is struggling, how to intervene and how to offer help.

The office’s staff members are not trained to be therapists or counselors, but rather to link students to helpful resources, Prust says.

The Princeton Review’s Honor Roll is part of a larger Campus Mental Health Services Survey, conducted annually in partnership with the Ruderman Family Foundation to try to end the stigma associated with mental health issues. The two-part survey gathered responses of administrators from nearly 750 colleges about their school’s mental health and wellness services, and responses from students at more than 300 colleges about their awareness of the services between fall 2025 and summer 2026. Access the full report here.