Episode 05: UCL Counselling Services - Let's ask the staff!

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Episode Five: UCL Counselling Services - Let's ask the staff!

00:00

Sophia

Hello and welcome to the Campus Conversations,

Nadia

A real look at navigating UCL life.

Kate

I'm Kate and I'm going into my third year studying History.

Nadia

I'm Nadia and I'm going into my fourth and final year of studying Pharmacy.

Sophia

I'm Sophia, I'm going into my third year studying Comparative Literature. And today we are at UCL newest campus, UCL East.

Today we'll be talking about wellbeing, which can be affected by big changes… Obviously! *laughs* Shall we get into it? Yeah.

00:44

Sonia

Thanks very much for having me. I am the head of the counseling service here at UCL, and it's a service that's for all of the students that you. So no matter what, sort of study you're doing, undergrad, post-grad and so on. And what I do at the service is I manage the team there, and I also see students as well for some counseling.

01.05

Kate

What sorts of concerns or issues can we kind of come to you with?

01.08

Sonia

Our service is for people that are having any personal struggles, emotional or psychological difficulties, and that can be a range of things. So it might be things to do with university studies. So anxiety about work, work, performance, loneliness, especially in the first year in halls, moving away from home, that sort of thing. But it can also be, relationships with family, things that may have been going on before you came to university as well. It might be anxiety issues, depression issues. So it's a range of things, any sort of personal issues that someone's having, emotional or psychological, just to come along and to speak to us about those things. And we can help to sort of help the person deal with it to cope with that.

01.58

Sophia

So how would a student access the service?

02.00

Sonia

People will know that there is ask UCL, which is a platform for students to use to access many different services. Unfortunately, that's not one that our service is. So students can go that way. I mention it because you can go that way and then just say, okay, we are you know, I'm wanting to to register with the service and someone will point you in the right direction, but the easiest thing to do is if you just Google UCL, counseling services will pop up. So, our official name is Student Psychological and Counseling Service. So you might see that when you Google. But as long as you Google UCL counseling services, you'll see the UCL logo and you'll see everything you can click on, and that will show you that you're in the right place. Once you're on the website. There's lots of information there. There are things to do before you register. One of the things that we asked for students to have is GP. So a general practitioner doctor, just in case we do need to at any point while they're registered with us, get in contact with the NHS services. It might be at the end so they can get further treatment. It might be that a student isn't best suited to our service, so we can help to point them in the right direction and have contact with the right people at the right time. So that's another thing as well, but only if it's necessary. Do we have to do that. And then as students look through, they'll see a bit that says register for counseling goes to that page. It explains a lot about our service. Click on the button that says Register for counseling. And then there's a form to fill in. Now I wanted to say as well that this form can seem quite long, but it's very necessary. And the reason that we ask all the questions that we do is because we want to make sure that we have a clear picture as to what's going on for the person that's registering. Make sure they're in the right place. If not, we can point them elsewhere. And also just so we know what we're dealing with, what the person's looking for, help with, so that we can make sure they're getting the most appropriate help from the service.

04.04

Sophia

If a student feels like they need support while they're waiting to access the service. What advice would you give?

04.07

Sonia

Once someone registers they will get an immediate, email acknowledging their registration within 24 hours. Their form is looked at by one of the clinical team. So we'll go through. We call it triaging. It's just going through, looking at the form, seeing if someone is suitable for the service. Seeing what it is that they might need. And it's a way for us to assess risk as well. So if a person is very risky, maybe they're thinking about harming themselves or they have thoughts like that. That's where the GP details come in handy, because we can then reach out to the GP to make sure they get the appropriate support, or get in contact with crisis teams and so on. And then that wouldn't necessarily be seen by our service. If all is okay, then they're put through for the initial assessment. And that's where we have a look and see. Okay, what is it this person wants to talk about and what's the best way for us to help them. So people will receive their assessment session within 2 to 3 weeks of registering. That's the majority of the time. There are some times of year I will say that are very, very busy. So start of term can be busy. It might extend a little bit longer, maybe four weeks, but in 2 to 3 weeks you should have your first assessment after that. Then it's a case of waiting to be seen for ongoing sessions, and it's up to six sessions that a person can access every academic year. Okay. And that's because the number of students that we see in the number of people that we need to get seen by, by a therapist. So while waiting, I guess that's the bit that, you know, while you're waiting between your assessment and your ongoing sessions, we would say to people, if you find that waiting time difficult, first port of call, I would say go to GP, speak to someone. But we also have within our team as well as our counselors, we have mental health coordinators, so if they email through to our service, which is have all the information, if you're already waiting, you can email through and say, I'm struggling a bit, I want to talk to someone. And then one of our mental health coordinators can get in touch with you and then see what the best action is and the best way to go from.

There are services around all year. We're only closed when the uni is closed, so at the end of December and then for the sort of spring break period, that's when we're closed. Otherwise we're here all year round. And so when I say accessing the service once an academic year, I guess we're thinking from sort of freshers week is in September through to the next September, when freshers week starts again. So in that period you can access the service once and even in the summer as you, as you are. So if you are someone like yourselves or students who will be going into another year of study, you can actually now fill out a registration form and we will take you through the steps and you can start to see someone as soon as we have that space available, and someone to see you for assessment and then the ongoing sessions if you're suitable.

07.13

Nadia

And so when you start accessing the service and you do the initial assessment, do you inform the students department that they're accessing?

07.20

Sonia

No, no, no. So, the service is completely confidential and we work with therapists confidentiality sort of guidelines, which is we're not telling anyone that you're accessing the service. You're not speaking to anyone unless we feel that you might be in, in sort of danger of harm yourself or you mentioning that other people may be a danger of being harmed.

So that's when we would break things. And our counseling service actually sits within the wider student support and wellbeing services. So SSW as people may hear. And within that there are lots of different services. So there's the disability, mental health and wellbeing team. There's the chaplaincy, an interfaith team. So we all work together. So when I say everything is confidential within our service, I'm talking about the wider student support, more being services, because we're just making sure that we have a bit of a wrap around students so that we can make sure they're getting the best support. That's that's needed. But only, as I say, with anything is only if it's needed. So if someone is being seen by one of our counselors, and then we find out that something has happened and they're also being seen by a disability advisor, we may have a conversation just to make sure that we're all on the same page, so that we can give the correct support to the people that need it.

So I hope you don't mind me asking, but have any of you access the service? Tried to access the service?

08.44

Kate

Yeah. So, I mean, I had six sessions of CBT last year and probably about May time, so, you know, peak deadline season. That was a bit of a tough time. But I recently thought, oh, I should apply for it again, especially because, you know, there's, six sessions until the next academic year. So I was like, may as well use them up for, you know, it changes again. But, yes, I recently applied for it probably about a few days ago. You know, filled out the long form, as you said. And I've already got an assessment box, in a few days time. So I, you know, the periods do change. Like, sometimes you'll have to wait a lot longer because it never everyone's applying, but, other times. So in summer, you really do have to wait long at all.

09.27

Sonia

As I said, there can be sort of peaks and troughs in, in sort of the busyness of the service. So, start of term one is always busy, exam time. So maybe like you were saying, that's always very busy time as well. Around the first reading week as well, actually that's quite busy.  And I guess that's where a lot of people who are just coming into university, if either really enjoyed it or you kind of gone, oh, is this for me? Or I don't know, and you have questions and sometimes as well, going home around the end of year break, that's another one because people actually have maybe and this is why I said that we deal with all sorts of issues. People maybe have escaped things that are happening at home and it's like, oh, this is good. And then it's the going back home. It's like, oh yeah, I've got to do this. And you know, this is not really what I want to do and I don't know how to handle it. So there are lots of different reasons why people can come and speak to us.

The peaks and troughs, I mean, we see about about 8% of UCL students. So saying roughly UCL have about 50,000 students, that's about 4000 students a year. But we're seeing and so it might be, you know, that someone has an issue that they're like, yep, I know what I need help with. And they're quite focused on that. Sometimes you spend a bit of time just helping people to understand what it is that they need help with. And so the experience of counseling can be very different for, for different people. But I think it's definitely, I would say if you feel that it might be something that would be useful for you to fill out the form, come along, speak to someone. We can make a note if you want to be seen by a particular gender, race or anything like that. We try our best to meet all of those needs, but our service obviously will have certain people working at the service. We may not have what a student is looking for, so we'll try to find sort of like, okay, you wanted a woman and you wanted her to, you know, have knowledge in this area. We don't have women with knowledge in that area, but we have some. He's very good at that area, you know, so we do try to meet as many needs as possible, but sadly it's not possible to meet everything. Some of the preferences were asked for his time as well. Like can I have it on a Wednesday afternoon at two, for example? And again, as much as we can, we try to meet people's preference, but that can sometimes, if people aren't able to sort of bend from, the preference can lead to a longer waiting time, because if it's only a particular day particular person that you want that particular time, unfortunately that's going to take a while to actually get to.

So that's something I think it's useful to just be aware that, you know, all of our therapists are highly qualified, you know, and I get like you said, Nadia, there might be people where it's like, I don't feel comfortable speaking to a woman about this one, and that's completely understandable. But just be aware that that may have an impact on waiting times as well.

12.18

Sophia

I think even if you're someone who hasn't necessarily struggled with their mental health with before, it's so reassuring to know that that kind of support is in place.

12.26

Sonia

Yeah, definitely. And I think, you know, life throws things at us just randomly and we don't expect maybe that things are going to and they do. And so it's good to know that you have got support a way of accessing support, at least starting that conversation through the counseling service.

12.41

Sophia

Sonia, thank you so much for your time today. For further information about accessing counseling services at UCL, check the link below.