By: Courtney Colaluca
Suffolk University’s counseling center and health services are in the process of merging to one service in order to reach out to more students and provide proper care. The merger will physically connect both departments, located on the 5th floor of 73 Tremont, officials said.
Dr. Paul Korn, professor of psychological services, said the merge will be more efficient financially, and that the departments will be able to work within two budgets instead of one. The health professionals will be trained to aid those will mental issues, and resources will be combined.
Director of Health and Wellness Dr. Jean M. Joyce-Brady said the merger will make the services more accessible.
“We also hope to increase student access to wellness education by addressing how students have access to wellness resources,” Joyce-Brady said. “We are thinking about this in terms of technology and space.”
Health services and the counseling center were always connected through patient referrals and sharing resources. But the merger will allow the departments to be able to diagnose patients to the fullest capability.
“The message is that physical and mental health needs should both be viewed as health needs, which any student may have, and both deserving of care without stigma,” said Joyce-Brady. “Anyone can suffer from diabetes or depression and both deserve and benefit from quality care.”
According to Korn, healthcare professionals sometimes can miss certain signs of a mental illness because of ill training. Korn expressed his concern for overlooked mental illness cases, and his views on depression.
Korn described depression as “digging a hole and going deeper and deeper but the dirt is coming down on them. If they stay there it becomes their identity and it’s hard to come out.”
Without the proper training, depression can go untreated. Overlooking depression, and other mental illnesses can lead to someone losing touch with themselves completely, according to Korn.
One of the main missions of this merger is to reduce the number of people who are being mistreated or having mental illnesses overlooked. More and more colleges and universities are moving towards merged counseling, health and wellness services for students, officials said.“Health providers will work as a team to support and treat student holistic health needs as well as to provide prevention and outreach programs regarding these needs,” said Joyce-Brady. “Both medical providers and psychologists will have the option to develop shared treatment plans together to meet a student’s needs.”
