Counseling, support available through counseling services

Success. The word that keeps many students alive and keeps us up late studying for tests and writing papers.

The idea that we will graduate one day and become “successful” rings in the back of our heads when we wake up for 5 a.m. registration or when we get that small high from studying between the books until the librarian kicks us out. We feel success when an A on that hard test comes back.

We know success when we feel like something is right in our souls. However, we know that success seems far away sometimes. With the stresses of staying up late, extra workloads and trying to decide areas of study, sometimes a little extra support can be a lifesaver.

Dr. Mary Jean Phillips of the GCSU Counseling Department said: “We try to help students remove roadblocks to success.”

Counseling services at GCSU provide service to all university students for free while any non-university individuals are charged a fee for services. There are a few counselors and a part-time psychiatrist on staff. Semester fees paid by students are what keeps counseling services running.

Services offered not only include individual and group counseling, but also couples and family counseling, academic support, career counseling, presentations and events on special topics, referrals and an initial psychiatric evaluation. Counselors also help people with significant personality disorders and mental illnesses.

“Our job is to help you figure out what your options are,” Phillips said. “We are not designed to give people advice or tell them what to do; we do help people figure out what their choices are and how to implement them.”

Phillips said that the first question she asks every new client is: “What do you want to change?”

Relationships, adjustment to college, dealing with grief, anxiety, time management and stress are all just a portion of the factors that counseling services can help people understand and cope with. Phillips said going to college has an impact on students and learning to deal with the stress is part of it.

In the fall, individual client contacts went up 40 percent from a year earlier, she noted. Not only did the number of students in need of service go up, but the severity of issues rose also. In the fall of 2008 just 2 percent of students reported trauma in their lives, but by this past fall that figure rose to 22 percent. The counselors and psychologists on campus are still puzzled by the jump in the numbers.

With so many students in need of counseling, appointments were almost impossible to make. As a result, faculty and staff members were concerned about getting students into the services in a timely manner.

“We were really worried for people’s safety and well-being,” Phillips said. “It was really bad but we got everyone out alive.”

With a small staff in search of help, it was decided that part of GCSU’s emergency funds would go toward mental health.

Since then, counseling services has increased the flexibility of its department by adding another counselor and increasing the psychiatrist’s time. It’s also hiring a nurse practitioner who is able to follow up with psychiatric services in Student Health Services.

“We were able to keep it together for a few months, but now we are a lot better,” Phillips said.

There is still a tight schedule and with two temporary staff spots in the department, they are now doing a permanent search. There are now counselors, psychologists and therapists on staff.

“For the entire academic community, we work it at a systematic level to promote growth and development for everybody here in this environment,” Phillips said.

Posted by Rachel Moldovan on Apr 9 2010. Filed under Focus On. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. You can leave a response or trackback to this entry