The efforts made by the Counseling Services Center to support students with mental health and wellness have earned its accreditation by the International Accreditation of Counseling Services.
“While I had confidence in our team and our alignment with the IACS standards, I was thrilled to have learned that we can identify ourselves as an accredited program,” Director of Counseling Services Center Katherine Wolfe-Lyga said.
The Counseling Services Center not only follows the standards of the IACS, but will be adopting recommendations as well, one being contributing to research.
“We have become a contributing member of the Center for Collegiate Mental Health, which means that we provide de-identified and aggregated data from an assessment so that we can benchmark against the national data,” Wolfe-Lyga said. “The tangible benefit for us is that we can use that as feedback and learn from peer institutions about what is working for better student mental health outcomes.”
There are many resources offered to students by the center. Along with individual counseling, the center has other initiatives to support students, including Lets Talk!, a consultation service developed at Cornell University.
“We use Lets Talk, which is a drop-in consultation service, to reach students who may not otherwise be comfortable coming to the Counseling Services Center,” Wolfe-Lyga said. “Our hope is that this type of service will be enough to meet their needs and/or it supports students being more comfortable coming to the center.”
Counseling Services Center also runs numerous support groups. Mental Health Counselor Cory Brosch runs Grief and Loss, an open support group. In March she will run The Body Project, a four-week group centered on preventing negative body images and eating disorders.
“It’s about body positivity, self-acceptance, empowering you about your body image and yourself worth,” Brosch said.
Support groups are typically made up of about eight students, depending on the group, Brosch said. Most open support groups allow students to attend a group without commitment or prior screening from a counselor. To get into a closed group, a student would have to contact Counseling Services Center and would likely meet with a counselor to ensure the group is a right fit, Brosch said.
“The support groups just tend to be looser and not so rigid, not so counselor driven, and they really meet the needs of the students on any given day,” Brosch said.
Additionally, the center holds workshops, one being Feel Good Fridays. At these workshops, students participate in therapeutic activities aimed at self-reflection and reducing stress and anxiety.
“I’m running the one for this week and it’s planting seeds, but I’m also going to have them plant a goal or a wish for the semester too,” Brosch said. “So it’s metaphorical. It gets them thinking about what they want to accomplish this semester and hopefully as their seed sprouts they can kind of reflect on how that goal is going too.”
Brosch is excited about the Counseling Services Center receiving accreditation.
“It was such a relief and it was just so exciting that we did, and I was really proud of us, especially the directors who put in a lot of work,” Brosch said. “It shows that SUNY Oswego’s counseling center is doing really good things.”
Through the numerous resources offered, Counseling Services Center strives to aid and support students with their mental health and wellness.
“Often, students are lonely or feel lost because they do not know where to go with certain issues, and we are sought as a starting place to support students in addressing these concerns,” Wolfe-Lyga said. “We know that students have better personal and academic outcomes when they attend to their mental health needs, even if they do that in ways that do not include counseling, which is why this is such an important service to offer on a college campus.”
More information about Counseling Services Center, including schedules for support groups and workshops, are available on its website.
Photo by Nicole Hube | The Oswegonian
