Despite budget cuts to University Health and Counseling Services, which have led to reduced hours for health and counseling workers, the counseling center has started a suicide prevention program to increase the number of students who come in for help.
Last spring the health center started an online outreach suicide prevention program developed by the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention. The program, USM Cares, differs greatly from past counseling services in the sense that students don’t have to decide to reach out for help — the help comes to them, said Bob Small, the clinical director of Counseling Services.
Small said only one USM student committed suicide last May, but five committed suicide the year before. He said these students were not actively seeking help from counseling services.
Every two weeks, roughly 200 students are chosen at random and invited to take an online questionnaire. The questions are designed to assess the levels of depression and stress each student may be experiencing, and the idea is to flag students who may benefit greatly from counseling. The information given by the students is encrypted, and the identity of any individual student is not revealed to anyone, including counselors who review the surveys.
Clinicians can reach out to at-risk students by sending them e-mails. Students can also sign up for an anonymous chat where they can consult with a clinician or counselor online.
The goal is to have the students come in to talk to someone. Small said the identity of the students who they contact aren’t known to the counselors until the students actually come in to the office.
As part of the university’s effort to reduce non-academic spending, the university announced last May the closing of the health center on the Portland campus and the reduction in hours of 15 employees in University Health and Counseling Services, by closing down between semesters and during the summer break. Officials said these changes will save $300,000 a year once fully implemented. The changes took effect Sept. 1.
“We are extraordinarily busy and I think we could use more counselors,” said Kristine Bertini, director of University Health and Counseling Services, about the cuts to health and counseling.
She said students who come for first time usually have to wait longer to get an appointment and they don’t have enough manpower to send out online questionnaires to more than 200 students every two week.
“If somebody has an emergency we see them immediately,” said Bertini.
Bertini wrote a book about suicide called “Understanding and Preventing Suicide: The Development of Self-Destructive Patterns and Ways to Alter Them.” Along with being the director of health and counseling, Bertini also provides direct counseling care to students.
“I do know that we have had several students who have contacted our counselors via email and have come into the office in person seeking help,” she said.
“We’ve actually been thinking about this for a while,” said Bertini who was initially concerned about the program before seeing University of Maine start a similar program, called Touchstone, which has been successful.
“I wanted to be sure whoever was using this service would be safe,” said Bertini. “An online service is very different from having someone right in front on you.”
She said she was worried that if students told them they wanted to hurt themselves, the counselors wouldn’t be able to reach the students during after-hours.
She said the counseling center sees a rise in the number of calls at the beginning of the academic year in the fall, later on around the winter holidays and again in April, near the end of the year. “We have very busy predictable seasons,” said Bertini.
Nikki Horton and Jelena Sarenac contributed reporting.
Back when I graduated in 1994 – this was the first department to be cut. I can honestly say that without the counseling center, I wouldn’t be where I am today (successful, productive U.S. citizen). College students often have no health coverage – it’s important, because without counseling services the student is left with the choice of good health or nothing. I don’t know if he is still there – but Ira – changed my life, for the better.