The Journal of College Student Psychotherapy: 1985–2015

This issue of the Journal marks the 30th anniversary of its initial publication, bringing to mind how it was begun, made viable, and is now entering a new era of challenge and potential. As the founder and editor for its first 25 years, I offer here a brief historical note, and my heartfelt thanks to the many contributors to the Journal’s success.

In 1984, a new president of Swarthmore College questioned the need for student psychological services. Like many other college and university leaders, he saw such services as unnecessary to the institution’s academic mission. In response, students and I arranged a debate with him, and I wrote an article, “Communicating the Value of Psychotherapy with College Students” which was published in the February 1985 issue of the Journal of American College Health. The article documented how psychotherapy is often crucial for students’ development of intellectual as well as personal and social potential, noting that all successful psychotherapy provides experiential learning experience that is both corrective and preventive of psychological limitations. As a result, psychological services were continued.

Having read my article, the publisher of Haworth Press invited me to found a new professional journal. After a year of assembling an editorial board and soliciting manuscripts, the Journal of College Student Psychotherapy appeared in the fall of 1986. Robert Arnstein, Chief Psychiatrist in the Yale Department of University Health Services, wrote the lead article: his reflections on fundamental ethical and value issues in psychotherapy with college and university students. In both my article and editorial introduction, I said that we hoped that the Journal would help show the importance of psychotherapy to student development.

During our 21 years with Haworth Press, we provided articles on psychotherapy per se and topics important to understanding and helping college and university students. Ten thematic multiple issues became Monograph Separates published simultaneously with the Journal, from 1988 through 2007, as hardback and paperback books: Parental Concerns; Alcoholism/Chemical Dependency; Bulimia; Suicide; Student Development; Campus Violence; Graduate Students; Brief Psychotherapy; Evidence-Based Psychotherapy; and Pharmacological Treatment.

By 2008, having become well-established, the Journal was acquired from Haworth by publisher Routledge, Taylor & Francis Group, and it was adopted by the Association for University and College Counseling Center Directors (AUCCCD). Both Haworth and Routledge provided excellent service.

In 2010, Board member and author Paul Grayson, PhD accepted my invitation to succeed me as Editor if he and Philip Meilman, PhD could share responsibility as Co-Editors. Now, in 2016, following their years of outstanding stewardship of the Journal, new Co-Editors are coming aboard at their invitation: Ryan Weatherford, PhD of West Chester University and Phillip Rosenbaum, PhD of Haverford College.

Altogether, I am grateful to the Editors, Board members, authors, reviewers, and readers who have made the Journal successful in its first 30 years. I hope to see it continue to contribute greatly to the well-being of college and university students in their pivotal time of life.