The Counseling and Mental Health Center will continue to offer students the entirety of its services via telehealth this fall.

Ginny Maril, associate director for clinical services at CMHC, said individual counseling, group counseling, crisis services, psychiatry and all other mental health services will be offered remotely. In-person interactions will only occur briefly and when absolutely necessary, such as coordinating a hospitalization on site, Maril said. 

“We want to make sure that we're providing excellent care,” Maril said. “That's really our number one priority.”

Maril said students will still be able to have a same-day appointment when they experience a situation that warrants seeing a counselor immediately, but these services will also be online. 

Maril said there will be more support groups available compared to the summer groups, since the CMHC typically offers between 40 to 50 groups during long semesters. Topics will be based on student needs. 

“Our students are really important to us, and we know their well being is being challenged in a lot of different ways this semester so we want to make sure we are, number one, being responsive to student needs,” Maril said.

Maril said the process of making an appointment has largely remained the same. Students can call the main CMHC phone number to complete their triage, which is a 10 to 15 minute initial assessment. If calling is not an option, students can walk into the center and sit in a sanitized, private confidential space to complete their triage or have a telehealth appointment, according to the CMHC website. 

CMHC psychologist Joey Hannah helped coordinate the center’s transition to telehealth services. He said the center had already begun a pilot telehealth service before the pandemic started, which helped ease the transition. 

“Making that shift was very sudden and abrupt and difficult, but in some ways we were kind of prepared,” Hannah said. “That's always an adjustment, but in a lot of ways I'm really proud of our staff for how quickly we were moving.”

Hannah said a clear advantage of telehealth counseling is increased accessibility, allowing the center to serve more in the community.  He said it takes more work to connect with patients over the phone or video, but it is doable and has been satisfying for many patients. 

“People can now access counseling services that maybe they couldn't before,” Hannah said. “Whether it's that they didn't have a schedule that matched up well or have the ability to physically come to CMHC, it's really opened the door for a lot of people that weren't able to work with one of our counselors before.”

Kat Spickermann, an international relations and global studies sophomore, said she enjoyed her telehealth counseling sessions, as she developed a good relationship with her therapist. 

“I would be comfortable with telehealth becoming more permanent,” Spickermann said. “It's a useful tool and is able to reach more people. However, I don't think that it's entirely a perfect replacement for meeting in person. There's always technology problems, and I feel the relationship with your therapist is slightly altered … you miss body language cues.”