Sohom Chatterjee, Youssef Hebaish, Lewis Ntaimo, James Deegear, Miles Rucker, Hrayer Aprahamian
{"title":"A quantitative simulation–based modeling approach for college counseling centers","authors":"Sohom Chatterjee, Youssef Hebaish, Lewis Ntaimo, James Deegear, Miles Rucker, Hrayer Aprahamian","doi":"10.1177/00375497231159675","DOIUrl":null,"url":null,"abstract":"College counseling centers in various universities have been tasked with the important responsibility of attending to the mental health needs of their students. Owing to the unprecedented recent surge of demand for such services, college counseling centers are facing several crippling resource-level challenges. This is leading to longer wait times which limit access to critical mental health services. To address these challenges, we construct a discrete-event simulation model that captures several intricate details of their operations and provides a data-driven framework to quantify the effect of different policy changes. In contrast to existing work on this matter, which is primarily based on qualitative assessments, the considered quantitative approach has the potential to lead to key observations that can assist counseling directors in constructing a system with desirable performance. To demonstrate the benefit of the considered simulation model, we use data specific to Texas A&M’s Counseling & Psychological Services to run a series of numerical experiments. Our results demonstrate the predictive power of the simulation model, highlight a number of key observations, and identify policy changes that result in desirable system performance.","PeriodicalId":49516,"journal":{"name":"Simulation-Transactions of the Society for Modeling and Simulation International","volume":"246 1","pages":"791 - 815"},"PeriodicalIF":1.3000,"publicationDate":"2022-06-03","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":"1","resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":null,"PeriodicalName":"Simulation-Transactions of the Society for Modeling and Simulation International","FirstCategoryId":"5","ListUrlMain":"https://doi.org/10.1177/00375497231159675","RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"工程技术","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":null,"EPubDate":"","PubModel":"","JCR":"Q4","JCRName":"COMPUTER SCIENCE, INTERDISCIPLINARY APPLICATIONS","Score":null,"Total":0}
引用次数: 1
Abstract
College counseling centers in various universities have been tasked with the important responsibility of attending to the mental health needs of their students. Owing to the unprecedented recent surge of demand for such services, college counseling centers are facing several crippling resource-level challenges. This is leading to longer wait times which limit access to critical mental health services. To address these challenges, we construct a discrete-event simulation model that captures several intricate details of their operations and provides a data-driven framework to quantify the effect of different policy changes. In contrast to existing work on this matter, which is primarily based on qualitative assessments, the considered quantitative approach has the potential to lead to key observations that can assist counseling directors in constructing a system with desirable performance. To demonstrate the benefit of the considered simulation model, we use data specific to Texas A&M’s Counseling & Psychological Services to run a series of numerical experiments. Our results demonstrate the predictive power of the simulation model, highlight a number of key observations, and identify policy changes that result in desirable system performance.
期刊介绍:
SIMULATION is a peer-reviewed journal, which covers subjects including the modelling and simulation of: computer networking and communications, high performance computers, real-time systems, mobile and intelligent agents, simulation software, and language design, system engineering and design, aerospace, traffic systems, microelectronics, robotics, mechatronics, and air traffic and chemistry, physics, biology, medicine, biomedicine, sociology, and cognition.