Hunter students – like their peers around the country – juggle class, job and family responsibilities and must contend with stress and anxiety on the path to academic success but they don’t have to contend with these type of pressures alone. The College provides free counseling services to help them accomplish their academic goals.
“Our goal is to provide education, resources, materials, and support for any student that has a health or wellness-related problem that is impeding on their academic success,” said Corinn Dembkoski, 27, an health educator in the College’s Wellness Education Center located Room 1123 in the East Building.
“Students should come to the Wellness Education Center if they are looking for ways to balance their life in a healthy way and need help to maintain their academic excellence.”
To generate awareness of the free services, the Center organized a tabling event on a Monday early in the semester outside the student cafeteria on the third floor of Hunter West. Pamphlets, questionnaires, and other informative material were handed out to encourage students to take advantage of upcoming events and to learn more about what is available.
Yardena Brickman, an intern at the Center as well as a Hunter senior, listed the issues she addresses most commonly on a daily basis, such as relationship struggles, anxiety, depression, self-esteem issues, gender questioning and students who experienced a recent death of a loved one.
“I think that in many cases, students are very aware that something is not right in the way they are feeling emotionally, but they have some trouble pinpointing what it is that’s bothering them specifically. This is where personal counseling can help,” said Rachel Raboy, who wore a sweater and jeans. Raboy, a personal counseling service intern from Columbia University, was at the tabling to answer students’ questions.
Raboy. expecting to graduate this year with a Master of Science degree in social work, focuses on areas of advanced clinical practice, health, mental health and disabilities. “I chose this internship because of the clinical experience it affords and the nature of the college population,” said Raboy, who declined to give her age, but has interned since fall, 2007. At a college so ethnically diverse, the counselors deal with a variety of topics, said the counselors interviewed.
Sharony Sheer, a 21-year-old, third-year Hunter psychology major, also volunteered at this tabling event. Dressed in all black, she said, “And it’s free! Services like this are not always affordable, and that is why we encourage students to take full advantage.”
According to a flyer, Wellness Education Center events included general health information tabling, which occurred at this location twice a week, and recess, where students play Hunter’s version of various games, such as Candyland, Go Fish, and Uno.
Prizes for winners include free condoms and candy to promote safe sex. Other services included stress reduction workshops and mental health screenings. The volunteers especially talked up the stress reduction workshops, saying they understood students’ accumulated anxiety due to schoolwork and other daily stress enhancers.
“We are aware that stress and anxiety is the biggest concern for students, based on our health survey data, so we think it’s important to give students an idea of what stress entails, even if they don’t understand it themselves, and also to offer services from Hunter like free counseling,” said Dembkoski, 27, of Brooklyn Heights. She is a Hunter alumna and has a masters in public health. She joined the department in January, 2008.
In reference to the tabling event, Brickman, who is planning to graduate this spring, said, “We all hope that this will achieve awareness of services we offer to students. We also want to identify specifically who will benefit.”
Brickman and Raboy said they typically see three to four students a day, however, both said they wished they could help even more. “I think that it does increase awareness in that each person who stops by and fills out the questionnaire comes away with a better understanding of certain mental health issues,” said Raboy.
The interns said many of their responsibilities include assessing students for mental health issues, providing brief treatment or referral to off campus clinicians and crisis intervention. Brickman and Raboy said that all counselors and interns must ensure confidentiality. “Students come to us trusting that what is discussed remains between the student and counselor,” said Raboy.
However, before any counseling session, students are informed of two principles: One, that interns are required to discuss key elements of the session with whom they intern for, which is another counselor in charge of the intern. The other, that all information be kept confidential, except when students indicate they may harm themselves or others.
The members at this tabling event expressed hope that more students consider personal counseling services and other services that the Wellness Education Center offers. “We welcome all students. No issue goes unaccepted for personal counseling and students can only gain from the experience,” said Brickman.
The WORD’s Kristin Rocco can be reached at Kristinmrocco@aol.com.