Happy Mental Health Awareness Month! Maintaining a healthy lifestyle is more than just physical well-being. To be truly healthy, we need to focus on social, mental, emotional, physical and our spiritual aspects of our health.
For those of you who don’t know, May is Mental Health Awareness Month. Mental health includes our emotional, psychological and social well-being that can affect how we feel, think and act. Having a strong mental state can help us determine how we handle stress, relate to one-another and how we make choices.
In the U.S., nearly one out of five adults will experience some type of mental illness… that’s more than 43 million U.S. adults! Mental health is an important aspect of life at any age, especially in adolescence to adulthood. Mental health issues are the second leading cause of death for people between the ages of 15 to 24- high school and college-aged kids.
In an effort to prevent further mental health issues, it’s important to know about all of the resources Ole Miss has to offer for those who feel they need it.
Ole Miss offers a variety of services including initial consultations and referrals, individual counseling, group therapy, substance abuse help and crisis intervention, as well as self-help guides and educational resources.
The Ole Miss Counseling Center is free for all students. Once an initial consultation is conducted, a plan on how to move forward is created, including how many sessions need to be attended. Because of high demand for counseling services, the Counseling Center focuses on short term treatments but is happy to arrange accommodations for those that need further treatment. Rest easy knowing that all information discussed in therapy is confidential and will not be released unless there is evidence of self-harm or harming others.
Ole Miss also offers group therapy sessions for a variety of issues. They are subject to change every semester based on demand but take a look at some examples from spring semester of 2018:
General therapy
Women Supporting Women
Strategies Against Depression and Anxiety (SADA)
Graduate process group
Alcohol and Drug Abuse Psycho-educational (ADAP)
Bridging Across Cultures
TRANS-formations
Sexual Assault Support (SAS)
Making Peace with Food
UNITAS (LGBTQ+)
Meditation
Ole Miss also offers many outreach programs for a variety of health and wellness topics. Topics range from grief and loss to panic attacks, eating disorders to gambling and so on. For more information on outreach topics, click here.
There is also a Psychological Services Center (PSC) on campus. This is open to students as well as the general public. The PSC offers one-on-one treatment sessions and psychological assessments to determine what steps need to be taken for further treatment. One of the only differences between the PSC and the Counseling Center is price. The Counseling Center is a free resource but often times very busy, while there is a fee for the PSC but it is on a sliding scale and often affordable. The other main difference is at PSC, many of the sessions are conducted by graduate students but monitored by professionals.
Tips: The counseling center is a highly sought after resource and is very busy. Please keep in mind that you may have to wait up to a month for your first individual consultation but will be put on a regular schedule after that. If you need immediate services, the counseling center will go above and beyond to help find you accommodations
Both of these resources are extremely helpful and will work with you to accommodate any needs. If it is determined that your child may need medication, they will be referred to any of the on-campus psychiatrists, which is also free to students. Crisis intervention services are available 24/7 without an appointment.
For more information on the Counseling Center, click here.
For more information regarding PSC, click here.
