The counseling center has seen an increase in patients from certain demographics, its director said.
Most of the patients that have used the counseling center in the past have been white, identified as female and come from the College of Health and Behavioral Sciences; however, that is slowly changing.
Director of the Counseling Center Susan Sobel broke down the center’s patient demographics.
“We have about 16% Black, 6% Hispanic, about 3% Asian American, and then about 3% multiracial, and then less than 1% of Native Hawaiian, Pacific Islander or American Indian Alaskan Native,” Sobel said.
These numbers have gradually increased in the past few years because of the influx of students taking advantage of the services.
“We’ve seen a pretty steady increase over the last several years. As an example, I do know we’ve had 710 unique new people,” Sobel said.
With the inflow of new patients, there are still wait times of around two to three weeks to meet with one of UCA’s counselors for regular sessions.
There are options to meet with a counselor for crisis counseling, a walk-in system, which is still better than what you see in the community, Sobel said.
Group counseling is still available at the counseling center, however, many of the scheduled group sessions ended because of the pandemic and low student attendance.
The group sessions, introduced in spring 2020, were quickly shut down because of the COVID-19 pandemic.
In the fall of 2020, the group sessions started back up on Zoom, but the center shut them down again due to low attendance.
This past fall semester saw the resurgence of group sessions, but with only two to three sessions per semester.
“A lot of times, we get low enough attendance that we just have to stop them,” Sobel said.
This could be due to students’ schedules shifting and some students being reluctant to talk in a public setting.
Some of the successful group sessions are the women of color process group and the general anxiety group, which will be offered within the year.
Sobel is trying to schedule the group session for survivors of sexual abuse or assault.
Despite the center’s plans to increase group sessions, the university is refraining from increasing counseling staff due to budget concerns.
Financial concerns brought on by the pandemic and the expected decrease in higher education enrollment are just two reasons the university has not increased the counseling budget by much.
There have been two new hires within the past few years to help manage the increase of new patients and programs the center offers.
“We did manage to establish a foundation fund in the last couple of years, and I am going to work to get that up and running as something that people can donate to right now,” Sobel said.
Currently, the money going into the foundation fund is from a book cowritten by Sobel.
In response to wait times, Sobel suggested taking advantage of digital resources, getting out and moving and engaging in a creative outlet.
Additionally, the counseling center is preparing for Mental Health Awareness Month in April, where Sobel said there will be fun and informative events for all students to enjoy.