Stressed out? Relax, Western graduate students will offer free group counseling April 7 with the supervision of a clinical psychologist, graduate student Claire Mannino said.
“We hope to teach people to deal with anxiety and depression in a positive way and give them support,” Mannino said.
The counseling sessions start April 7 and usually last for three months, Mannino said.
People from the community have attended these group counseling sessions at Western for 10 years. This year is the first year it is open to Western students who need support with anxiety or depression issues, said David Sue, group counseling professor.
The groups are small, so each member will receive support not only from the group counseling leader but from each other as well, Sue said.
The sessions will start off with a large group so everybody can get to know each other and then break up into smaller groups, Sue said.
Trying to identify areas that are the source of bad emotions is important because bad thoughts can often interfere with an individual’s happiness and give the individual more anxiety, Sue said.
In order to find the right solution to these problems, three types of issues must be examined: cognitive issues, which have to do with the way people think; emotional issues, which can vary from person to person depending on the problem; and communication issues, which can cause anxiety to people who don’t have strong communication skills, Sue said.
One of the major issues students deal with is stress, graduate student Jennifer Hegel said.
Through these group counseling sessions people can learn about stress tolerance. A way to handle stress is to let stressful thoughts pass and not dwell on them, Hegel said.
It was a valuable experience to be able to work with people last year, Hegel said.
The rewards she said she feels of being a counselor are the opportunity to help people and, as a student, to learned new techniques to help.
There are four main concepts the group counselors use to help the participants that can be adjusted to each individual’s specific needs.
The first is mindfulness, which is the act of being aware of one’s thoughts and being able to focus on the here and now.
The second is emotional regulation, which puts the participant in a position where he or she can take control of their emotions.
The final concepts are interpersonal skills, which can help a person communicate in a better way with other people. And distress tolerance, which can help one cope with the many stresses in life, Hegel said.
The group counseling sessions received positive feedback last year from community members, saying that the group counseling was beneficial and it really helped them improve their problems and provided help to the community Mannino said. It also provided hands on experience for students, she said.
Hegel will conduct the first two sessions in Miller Hall Room 266 starting on April 7 and then he will turn it over to students, he said.
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