Oswego State’s Counseling Services Center is one of the many resources available to students in need of assistance.
The counseling center has made many changes this semester to benefit students’ mental health. The center has ongoing support groups for sexual assault, members of the LGBTQ community and Embracing U, an experimental group for women of color.
There is also Connect, a social support group for students who are struggling to build relationships and Project O-S YOU, which aims to provide opportunities to discover the powerful “inner you” that will enhance self-confidence. The center is also looking to add grief and anxiety group counseling.
Katherine Wolfe-Lyga, a licensed mental health counselor and the director of the Counseling Services Center, said group counseling “helps bridge a resource challenge” due to having only a handful of counselors for a very large student body.
According to Wolfe-Lyga, there are many benefits to group counseling such as the benefit of shared experience, building a support network and “being validated by other people who share an element of your experience is more powerful than you are going to get from individual counseling.”
The counseling center also wants to offer more community education outreach opportunities to teach students new coping skills and introduce them to new resources. The college has been invested in finding more places for students to deal with their experiences.
The center also offers the Let’s Talk consultation program, students have the opportunity to talk to a counselor and learn what we offer maybe talk about why they are there, if their issue is appropriate to be addressed through counseling or through some other means without having to feel like they are making a commitment to counseling. This program is not new to the school, though Wolfe-Lyga said the program is widely utilized. This is a positive because according to The Jed Foundation, only 20 percent of college students say they would seek help at their counseling center.
The center is assessing why students are using Let’s Talk. After completing a meeting, students can fill out a brief assessment on why they chose to use Let’s Talk. The only information they need to give is why they wanted to go. The center is hoping they can take the info from the assessments in order to provide more programs that meet the need of students.
The school is also implementing The NCAA’s Mental Health Best Practices which offer recommendations for member schools of all resource levels to implement in partnership with campus stakeholders in order to support student-athlete mental health and well-being.
During the fall semester the counseling center will also have extended hours on Mondays and Tuesdays for appointments. On these days the center will be open until 6 p.m. The center will also have counselors assigned to residence halls. For afterhours emergencies there is ‘Protocall,’ allowing students to call the center and be connected to a live counselor.
Another service offered is Counseling Center Peer Educators (P2P) who are Oswego State students who engage, empower and promote educational campus environments connected to psychological health and wellness. The “Brush Your Brain” video series, put out by the Counseling Services Center P2Ps highlights a variety of mental health topics and provides tips and tools, including subjects on coping with stress, test anxiety and long distance relationships.
