University of Connecticut |
Barry's CornerSeptember 2008
We’ll come to you! We really will. Sure, we do the in-house counseling thing and it is our bread and butter service, but we will also come to you. We frankly don’t want to be only in our offices. There are too many of interesting folks to meet, too many cool places to go to, and too many exciting things going on campus not to be part of it. The idea of “have mental health expertise, will travel” is what I want to chat about for this month’s Corner Comment. Most folks come to us seeking group and individual counseling and, in some cases, medication services. The other major service we are providing is on-campus programs on a wide topical menu of mental health issues. CMHS presents to well over 20% of the entire campus population each academic year. And that is students, staff, faculty, administrators, parents and families, and others. And we are always trying to increase that. We are also quite aware that when it comes to something more along the lines of our proverbial bread and butter services, not everyone finds it culturally relevant to come to CMHS to be a traditional client of our services. Many of our cultural communities on the campus won’t darken our door. It just ain’t right for them. No sweat! One size does not fit all. And that can go doubly for the likes of our services. So, we offer numerous non-traditional Western services as well as approaches to these services. We offer group services on the campus whereby students do not have to officially be clients of CMHS and the group is not the usual group therapy type of group. This seems to work for many cultural communities and we are glad to do it. We also sometimes find that if we just are in other folks’ communities, we make connections, and our very presence can be helpful. Nothing more brilliant than that, but no less helpful. Additionally, we are putting together trainings for the campus so that we are not limited to only providing programs when we are asked to. A good example of this is that CMHS is providing the national standard for suicide prevention training called “QPR Training,” it stands for “Question, Persuade, Refer.” It provides you sensitivity to recognize the signs of someone in trouble, the skills and confidence to intercede, and the knowledge of campus resources to know where to connect someone who needs help. So easy! Only ninety minutes and totally free. And we give you free stuff to take with you. Just go online and register by clicking here. And as I said above, if you have a larger group who wants training, ask us and we will bring the training to you and yours. We also started publishing THE CONNECTION which is the CMHS Mental Health Newsletter which comes out monthly during the academic year. Want to receive it each month? Let me know and I’ll make sure we send it to you; just send me an email. We also offer, on our website, online mental health assessments as well as MP3s to download to help you with relaxation whenever and wherever you want it. You can check it all out by clicking here. It is just another way we are trying to come to you. So, while we consider ourselves to be creative, we do not claim to always be geniuses, so if you have other ideas on how CMHS can come to you, let us know. CMHS desires to be a full service counseling center for UConn and so we are constantly thinking on how we can be more complex and technically savvy so we are accessible on many fronts and in many ways. As always, comments are welcomed! As with all my columns, I am completely open to further discussion about them. Just click here barry@uconn.edu and send me an email! |
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