UP Teaching & Learning Community Blog

mental health

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To Whom do you Refer? The People on UP’s Counseling Staff

Orrico hall, home of U P health and counseling servicesWhen we on the academic side of the University have concerns about the mental health of our students, one of our obvious resources is the staff of the UP Health and Counseling Center. Whether we get there via Early Alert or through a direct contact, it can be helpful for faculty and academic staff to know who might help us figure out how to help our students – and who is talking to the students who avail themselves of UP services.

For this 2017-2018 academic year there are two new psychologists on staff, along with several returning psychologists providing counseling services (and each year there are also graduate practicum counselors in training). The new psychologists this year are both somewhat on the administrative side of things, though with extensive backgrounds providing counseling services.

Carol Dell-Oliver, Ph.D., is the new Director of the Health and Counseling Center, taking over from Margaret Trout. Carol sent the following introduction for faculty:

Carol Dell-Oliver, Ph.D. is the new Director of the Health and Counseling Center. She has been a licensed clinical psychologist for 24 years, with extensive experience in university settings and private practice. Her areas of specialization include anxiety, depression, disaster recovery, and the assessment and treatment of trauma-related disorders. Her goals for the Health and Counseling Center are to assess UP’s current mental health, substance abuse and suicide efforts and to create a strategic plan to implement improvements. Other goals include expanding services and outreach efforts in health and wellness promotion, and improving students’ access to services to reach diverse and/or underserved populations.

Eliot Altschul, Ph.D., is the new Assistant Director for Counseling and Training, taking over from Will Meek. Eliot sent the following introduction for faculty:

I obtained my Ph.D. in Clinical Psychology from the California School of Professional Psychology in Berkeley/SF Bay Area. I trained in the Counseling Centers at Stanford and Boston Universities. Since my training I have held positions at Emory University as the Group Coordinator, George Washington University as a Staff Psychologist and Supervisor, Humboldt State University as their Director of Training, and at Clark College as the Director.  I also have extensive experience in other levels of care including inpatient, residential, day treatment and private practice.

I utilize an integrated approach to my therapeutic work with students including practical and solution-oriented, as well as brief psychodynamic and object relations modalities. I help student/clients understand, experience and manage their own emotional states.  I often approach this from a lens of mindfulness, in terms of self-observation without judgment, and self-compassion.  Some of my areas of interest and expertise include identity development, sexuality and spirituality.

The returning members of the counseling staff include Rikki Cor, Psy.D., Hannah Hoeflich, Psy.D., and Staci Wade-Hernandez, Psy.D.. They wanted to be introduced collectively, and sent the following for faculty:

University of Portland Health and Counseling Center is staffed by four full-time licensed psychologists and two pre-doctoral trainees who hold master’s degrees in psychology. The Counseling Center staff are committed to providing an emotionally safe, accessible, and compassionate space for all University of Portland students. We strive to integrate multicultural humility and competence into our everyday functioning, firmly planted in the belief that all people have dignity and are deserving of respect. Clinicians utilize empathy, open-mindedness, and the therapeutic relationship to increase insight and decrease emotional distress. All consultation and therapy meetings are confidential and student health information cannot be shared without written permission. Mental health counseling is available at no cost to all students enrolled full time at the University of Portland. We provide short-term counseling services for students experiencing a range of concerns. First visits are considered a consultation. These appointments last about 20 minutes and are focused on immediate student concerns and to develop a plan. Due to our model, it is possible that an off-campus referral for services will be made.

/* Featured Image by Andrew Guest

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Best Practices in College Student Mental Health: What The Jed Foundation Might Offer

the quad at UP, students walking across campusIn the midst of growing national attention to mental health several organizations have started providing resources and programming specific to the target demographic most relevant to our work as UP faculty: college students. One particularly prominent organization in this realm is The Jed Foundation, started in 2000 by a philanthropist couple who lost their son (Jed) to suicide during his sophomore year of college.

Some of us at UP have become familiar with The Jed Foundation in the last few years after the 2015-2016 President’s Panel on Mental Health recommended working with the Jed “Campus Program” which they describe as “A nationwide initiative designed to guide schools through a collaborative process of developing comprehensive systems, programs and policies with customized support to build upon existing student mental health, substance abuse and suicide prevention efforts.” This program involves a multi-year consultation towards improving mental health on college campuses, and UP has begun some of the initial steps in working with Jed on our campus. They estimate that over 150 colleges are participating in the program, including schools such as Notre Dame, the University of Washington, Princeton, and Georgetown, so we are in good company!

There may be points where this work directly intersects with faculty work, though much of it will involve a broader group of campus offices that work with students – ranging from the Health and Counseling Center to Public Safety. But there are also ways that The Jed Foundation might be of more direct interest to faculty and academic staff, including both specific information about “What to do if…I’m worried about someone” (such as one of our students) and their model for “a comprehensive, public health approach to promoting emotional well-being and preventing suicide and serious substance abuse.”

Their specific information about “What to do if…I’m worried about someone” includes informational resources that might help faculty and academic staff think about what to do with students of concern. How can we know when students are just bored and disengaged, or when those traits may actually be symptoms of more serious psychological distress? The short answer is that there is no easy way to know – and at UP any student that might raise those types of questions in your mind is likely worth first submitting an early alert through our own on-campus system. But it might also be helpful to know some of what The Jed Foundation identifies as “Common signs of suicidal thoughts and behaviors”:

  • Talking about wanting to end it all; in person, via text or on social media
  • Expressing guilt (e.g., “I’m a terrible person”) or hopelessness (e.g., “What’s the point, things will never get better”)
  • Withdrawal from everyday life (e.g., no longer spending time with friends or engaging in previously enjoyable hobbies/school activities)
  • Asking about or actively seeking access to means to self-harm (e.g., weapons, pills, etc.)
  • Giving away personal possessions
  • Changes in use of substances (alcohol and/or drug use)

Or what they identify as “additional warning signs that might indicate that a young person is suicidal”:

  • Change in eating and sleeping habits
  • Violent or unusually rebellious behavior; running away
  • Drug or alcohol use
  • Neglecting their appearance, change in their usual grooming habits
  • Persistent boredom
  • Change in physical health. Persistent complaints about ailments such as headaches and stomach aches
  • Not tolerating praise or reward

The Jed Foundation has many other related informational resources, and links to other related resources such as relevant web-pages for the American Association of Suicidology and the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline. Though it is worth remembering that faculty and academic staff’s main job with students of concern is to get them connected to the professional resources they need, we can also keep ourselves informed.

And it may also be helpful for faculty and academic staff to remember that promoting students well-being really does require what Jed calls a “comprehensive approach” (also see their strategic planning diagram below). Their model for colleges and universities includes components for helping students develop life skills; promoting social connectedness; identifying students at risk early; increasing help-seeking behavior; providing adequate mental health and substance abuse services; following appropriate crisis management procedures; and reducing access to potentially lethal means.

Faculty and academic staff are only one small part of this larger whole – but for the sake of our students, and for our own sake when we confront challenges in the classroom, we can take advantage of our academic brains to learn about and understand what national organizations such as The Jed Foundation already know.

 

 

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Student Mental Health: What Faculty (Might?) Need to Know

An empty lecture hall.What do UP faculty, and staff on the academic side of the University, need to know about student mental health? This question has been much on my mind the last few years as discussions about mental health in college has seemed to accelerate both locally and nationally.

At UP the issue particularly came to the fore during the 2015-2016 academic year after a tragic constellation of three student and one staff deaths by suicide. This was followed by a burst of concerted attention: Fr. Poorman created an Ad Hoc Panel on Mental Health to audit, consult, and recommend mental health services and supports for students; the organizing theme for the 2016 Faculty Development Day program was mental health; the University increased staff at the Health and Counseling Center and for related programs such as Early Alert.

There is no doubt that progress has been made. But the start of a new academic year, and the classrooms full of new faces, also offers a reminder that the challenges of educating students in head, hands, and heart are ongoing and dynamic; there is always more to do.

One thing I hope to do this year is to start integrating information about student mental health into the work of the Teaching and Learning Collaborative—and I’d love to hear from others on the academic side of the University about what would be most helpful. With the generous cooperation of Karen Eifler and others, the hope is to regularly make information available on this blog, to host periodic brownbag discussions about specific student mental health issues, and to better communicate among faculty and academic staff about ways of attending to the mental health of our students as a part of good teaching and learning.

As I noted during the 2016 Faculty Development Day program, faculty and academic staff do not need to (and really should not) become paraprofessional counselors – we have an excellent staff of real professional counselors on campus, and many other resources devoted to the mental health of our students. But if we are to truly educate our students as whole people, we do need to be aware of what we can and should do to connect students to services and supports they may sometimes need (as just one example, hopefully most faculty now know that submitting an ‘early alert’ for a student of concern is an important first step in getting access to appropriate help).

One of the important realizations I had while working on the 2015-2016 Ad Hoc Panel on Mental Health was that while there are many great support services for students across the University in departments ranging from athletics, to residence life, to public safety, to campus ministry, the faculty are the only group that will inevitably interact with every single UP student. Our classes are the one thing every UP student must do.

As such, there may also be ways to think about the educational environments we create on the academic side of the University in relation to mental health promotion. What, for example, can we do in the ways we communicate with students to help destigmatize mental health concerns? How can we help students separate their grades in courses from their value as people? What are best practices in higher education for helping faculty to be allies in creating healthy campus climates?

But this is also where I need your help; I’d love to hear from others what questions, and what insights, you have (please feel free to email me directly at guesta@up.edu). What can we on the academic side do to better open lines of communication that build off the good work done in recent years at UP related to student mental health? As a starting point, look for more in this blog space through the coming year.