Counseling: What to Expect
Often, students can face challenges and stresses as they navigate their way to graduation. When a student seeks out counseling services, our campus counselor can provide direct care (therapy) or indirect care (referrals) to assist in alleviating that distress.
Therapy is a process in which a student enters into a relationship with a trained professional in order to gain a deeper self-understanding and to identify more effective ways of responding to life’s challenges. You might want to change current patterns that don’t work, heal from your past or just need direction. A counselor can assist with this and facilitate the process primarily by providing a supportive, non-judgmental, problem-solving approach.
A student might want to seek counseling if he or she is struggling with any of the following:
- Mental Health: Anxiety, depression, mood disorder or stress
- Personal Issues: Low self-esteem, gender identity, poor body image, or eating disorder
- Relationships: Family, friends, partner; death of someone close
Some signs that counseling might be needed are:
- Binge eating or drinking
- Crying often over things that you might not usually get upset about
- Engaging in self-destructive behavior
- Fatigue or sleep problems
- Feeling “down in the dumps” most days
- Feeling fearful
- Feeling hopeless - no hope for the future
- Feeling lonely - nobody understands you
- Feeling nervous or jittery
- Feeling out of control
- Feeling stressed out with school or having academic problems
- Having a hard time concentrating or paying attention
- Irritability, not getting along with people
- Not enjoying usual activities
- Poor appetite
- Thoughts of harming yourself or someone else
Counseling: Individual, couple, family, and group
Students receiving counseling services:
- Are assured of confidentiality regarding their care and records and have a right to approve or refuse the release of their records, except when required by law or in a life-threatening situation
- Are entitled to information concerning the diagnosis, treatment, prognosis and the assessment in terms that can be understood
- Are informed of the medical consequences if a decision not to be treated is made
- Are treated with respect, dignity and privacy in a caring and considerate manner
- Have a right and a responsibility to ask questions and participate in decisions involving their care
- Have a right to know who is responsible for providing care
- Have the right to voice concerns or complaints without fear or reprisal
To schedule an appointment, please contact our campus counselors, at 860-913-2359 or email at . You can also fill out the counseling inquiry form.
Emergency walk-ins are welcome, but the counselors may be with a student who already has a scheduled appointment.
If a student is experiencing a crisis and a counselor is not available, please call Mobile Crisis at 2-1-1 or 9-1-1.
During the first meeting with the counselor, the student will be asked about current thoughts, feelings, experiences and goals that he or she would like to set for counseling.
The counselor will then have a better understanding of whether brief or long-term therapy is in the student’s best interest. If necessary, the counselor can also provide the student with referrals to external services that can address a variety of issues related to mental health.
Other recommendations that support and promote growth might be made. Some examples are:
- Counseling: Crisis, individual, family and couples
- Support groups: Bereavement, addiction, survivors, empowerment, psychotherapy and parenting
- Testing/Evaluations: Psychiatric, physiological, substance abuse
*Referrals are based on individual needs, health insurance and availability.
Sessions are typically 30 minutes-1 hour.