Zen Cole and Jaelyn Den hanging out in counseling center. Photo by Eden Boylan.
The Counseling and Wellness Center here at Snow College is a place for students to go and receive the support and aid they need when it comes to some of the challenges they’re facing. However, recently it has been struggling to get students an appointment in a timely manner.
According to the counseling and wellness center’s office manager and prevention specialist, Rachel Holbrook, the counseling center does not have enough counselors to fill the demand of students who need mental support. Student Abby Watson states, “They did not answer my calls for weeks, and it took a long time for me to actually get into an appointment.”
Despite ongoing attempts for years to receive more funding, the school has only recently been able to hire more counselors amongst other resources in light of increased COVID accommodations. The issue with this, according to Holbrook, is that when they opened the positions, nobody wanted to take them for just a year. The money to hire these counselors would only be for the current year.
To combat the issue of not being able to provide appointments for every student who signs up, the counseling center is changing the way they accept students.
Before, they had each student who came fill out an intake form to establish their needs. Then the student would be sent home and called when an appointment was available, sometimes two months later.
Now, they are trying to invite the students to have an intake appointment instead. These are 15-minute appointments with a counselor to assess how the student is doing and to help give them the resources they need in case they cannot make an appointment with them in a timely manner.
One of the resources used by the counseling center, and the school, is TAO. It is an online website to help students with all sorts of mental needs.
Another resource the counseling center provides are group meetings. They have two currently available, one provided by one of the counselors, the other provided by their prevention specialist.
To learn more about either of these resources, please contact the counseling office at 435.283.7136