Bright posters urge students to save it into their phones. The number is conveniently located on the back of each NYU ID.
Even "The Reality Show," a stage performance that doles out advice on student life to freshmen each fall, offers the number as a solution to whatever is on your mind.
But when some students call NYU's Wellness Exchange hotline, they say they find themselves dissatisfied with how counselors treat them, and many others don't even know what it is.
The Wellness Exchange is a division of the Student Health Center that focuses on helping students with mental health and sexual assault cases. Three years ago, NYU launched the emergency 24-hour hotline after the university witnessed a string of on-campus suicides. It is getting renewed attention after the suicides of two NYU undergraduates this semester.
Last month, WSN surveyed NYU undergraduates asking what they thought of the Wellness Exchange and if they had any experience with it.
Of the 342 students surveyed, many said they were unfamiliar with the Wellness Exchange or had never used it.
"Could you tell me more about it?" one student asked WSN. "I could use something like that."
Many praised the hotline's purpose, but others also questioned its effectiveness.
More than a dozen students - in interviews and on the survey - told WSN that they've heard rumors that the center doesn't always help people. And in interviews, several students said they've had bad experiences. They cite long wait times, slow support and unhelpful counselors who are too focused on preventing suicide to help with anything else. Wellness Exchange officials say they haven't gotten any complaints.
"The Wellness Exchange was not helpful at all," said Jane, a CAS sophomore who called in March after the death of her father.
WSN is using pseudonyms for some students in this article to protect their privacy.
Jane said the counselor who answered her call told her she was acting "like a high schooler" and refused her request for anonymity, despite the Wellness Exchange's insistence that students are not required to give their names.
"He tried very hard to get me to tell him who I was before he would let me speak to him about anything - he seemed more concerned with wrestling my name out of me than offering advice," she said.
In fact, Jane said the counselor put her on hold to consult a supervisor, but she became so frustrated that she hung up. She didn't feel like he was helping.
Linda, a senior in the Tisch Graduate School of the Arts, said she called the Wellness Exchange last year because she felt suicidal. After she did, she vowed never to call again.
Linda said she suffers from diabetes and her roommates were "throwing out her food" and damaged her insulin syringes because "they thought I was taking heroin."
"I called the Wellness Exchange and told them that along with being pretty much at the end of my rope, that I had nowhere to turn and I was feeling like self-inflicted death was the only way out," she explained.
The counselor she spoke to asked her if she was sure she wasn't overreacting.
"He kept telling me that this was a line for mental health, and that if I was feeling diabetic I should call the hospital," Linda said. "I couldn't get him to understand that it was all one huge issue, interwoven upon itself."
"After I was sobbing and hitching my breath and crying and telling him how I wanted to swallow an industrial-sized bottle of sleeping pills, he just did all he could to get me off the phone as if he couldn't be bothered," she added.
Scott, a CAS freshman who called the Wellness Exchange after a friend of his lost consciousness from drinking too much, said the phone rang nearly 20 times before anyone answered.
When an counselor did answer, Scott said he was transferred to another person. He hung up and called Public Safety.
Zoe Ragouzeos, director of the Wellness Exchange, said it was difficult to address these students' complaints' validity without knowing specifics.
"Each student here at NYU is different, with different needs," Ragouzeos said. "So I would like to know exactly what happened in each case so that I can comment adequately."
"My initial reaction, however, is that these situations are unlikely. If students were treated like this even only occasionally, they wouldn't make much use of the Wellness Exchange or the Counseling Service," she added.
Ragouzeos said that in the last two years, the Wellness Exchange's use has nearly doubled, from 3,200 calls to last year's 7,000 calls.
"This is a tremendous increase compared to two years ago, which seems to indicate that students have confidence in the services we provide," she said.
Its purpose, officials say, is to offer a portal through which students can access the university's range of health services. According to Ragouzeos, the hotline has round-the-clock clinicians on-call to help students with their medical, counseling and legal needs.
The counselors, she said, include psychologists, psychiatrists, social workers, nurse practitioners and supervised trainees in those professions, as well as counselors from a range of racial and national backgrounds and counselors that specialize in substance abuse, LGBT issues, eating disorders, international students, student housing and school-specific issues.
"I would also say I find it puzzling that students wouldn't make these complaints more formally if they had a negative experience with our students," Ragouzeos added.
Julian Cyr, the chairman of the Student Senators Council's Student Health Advisory Board, said his committee is concerned about issues with the Wellness Exchange and is discussing how to improve it.
"Ideally, everyone is going to have a positive health experience at the health center," he said. "Unfortunately that's not the case."
He said he thinks the Exchange should specifically work on its "non-crisis response."
Even when students do reach a hotline counselor, some say they're concerned that their calls are not taken seriously enough.
"I know others who have called the hotline and none of them said it was helpful or they'd call again," Jane said. "A friend of mine said that when she called, she was asked repeatedly if she was considering suicide even though that wasn't the case at all. She said suicide was the only thing the staff member seemed concerned with, and she just wanted some advice."
In survey responses, several students also reported subpar experiences with the Wellness Exchange.
One female CAS freshman said she was on hold for 20 minutes.
"I called it once with a medical emergency/concern and they put me on hold for 20 minutes," she wrote, adding that she's glad it's there but that she would "probably hesitate to call again."
One CAS junior said she was scared to call the Wellness Exchange in case NYU forced her to take a leave of absence.
"I don't think I would use it because NYU would fear the worst and probably remove me from their school to secure their reputation," she wrote.
Indeed, in 2004, NYU forced one student to take an indefinite medical leave after she called the Wellness Exchange.
She said the Wellness Exchange asked her to voluntarily admit herself to a hospital, but when doctors said she could go back to school, the university sent her home instead.
At the time, NYU spokesman John Beckman told WSN such instances were rare and that of the 3,400 students who use NYU's counseling services each year, about 100 to 120 take medical leave and in about 10 cases the student does so willingly.
Additional reporting by Christina Giardina. David Aragon is a contributing writer. Zainab Hasnain and Jane C. Timm are staff writers. E-mail them at news@nyunews.com.
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