Staff in the UT Dallas Student Counseling Center (SCC) want to provide greater transparency and understanding to the students, faculty and staff about the mental health and psychological concerns that can be supported and treated by the center and explain the objectives which guide our model of counseling.
Scope of Care Statement
To serve a diverse community of approximately 30,000 students, the services at the SCC are goal-directed, structured and solution focused. We provide these services through brief individual counseling, group counseling, relationship counseling, “problem-solving” sessions and advanced workshops. Additionally, we provide psychiatric medication management through our psychiatry team. These services are informed by our initial consultation process and assessment for the best treatment options. We do not provide “open-ended counseling” or “long-term counseling” because this will limit access to our services for all students. If you feel the need for this style of therapy, a referral for long-term counseling might be warranted.
General Definition
We define our general scope of care regarding mental health services as treating students with mild-to-moderate distress, or with severe distress that is likely to reduce rapidly with clinical interventions.
While not a fully comprehensive list, these are some possible indicators of distress that could use support or treatment from the SCC:
- Distress that is acute/short-term/recent in nature.
- Distress with one to two specific symptoms (i.e. panic attacks, dissociation).
- Distress that appears in response to adverse situations (i.e., sudden housing change, job loss, death of a loved one, a hate crime, sexual and physical assault).
- Distress that is known to reduce rapidly with interventions the SCC can provide (i.e., use of crisis management, medication management or “problem solving sessions”).
When presenting concerns are beyond the SCC’s scope of care, we consider it an ethical obligation to provide referrals to community providers who can offer the appropriate level of treatment. Some of these community providers offer specialized services off campus for students with a need for a higher level of care, so please reach out to us even if you are wanting services that are beyond what our staff therapists can provide.
Guiding Principles
In line with best practice standards of mental healthcare, the SCC uses a Comprehensive Multi-Track Care Model consisting of five key objectives:
- Provide a space for all students as well as students with marginalized identities to receive quality, safe and affirming mental health support and resources.
- Implement a quality “Multi-Track Services System” with dedicated triage, and crisis response services.
- Foster comprehensive peer support communities and recovery services for a wide range of mental health domains (e.g., The Center for Students in Recovery, OUTerSpace Support Group).
- Work with on campus partners to better serve students with sub-clinical needs.
- Collaborate with community resources and partners to connect students to services off campus for students with a need for a higher level of care than what the SCC can provide.
- In order to fully serve the diverse communities of students that attend UTD, the SCC is committed to providing quality, safe and affirming support to students from marginalized communities/backgrounds. We achieve this by being a center focused on providing services through culturally humble and trauma informed lenses. Moreover, in addition to our general services for all students, we accomplish this by providing identity-based services for students within the LGBTQ+ community, BIPOC community, disabled community and neurodivergent community.
- No presenting concern is “too small,” “not bad enough,” or “too nuanced” to be seen in our center, and some students even request one-time, “problem solving” sessions to discuss difficulties that may need minor intervention from a mental health professional. Services are provided by senior staff psychologists and counselors, as well as supervised clinicians (doctoral psychology interns and practicum students). All services provided directly by the SCC are covered by the cost of tuition. Every student will engage in a 30-minute initial consultation with one of our staff therapists who will assess for level of care needed. The student and staff therapist will then work collaboratively to determine what service(s) will best fit the student’s need(s) within the multi-track services model of the SCC.
- The SCC’s primary focus is providing clinical treatment and recovery services to all UTD students. We support other departments such as the Student Health Center, the Student Wellness Center and the SOAR office in promoting prevention and general wellness. However, most of our services are designed for students with mental health and psychological concerns. Thus, we do not typically provide services related to career counseling, academic skills and advising, financial aid counseling, etc., but can direct students to the appropriate departments to engage in the services we do not provide.
- Even with our connections to community providers, the SCC is not a behavioral health hospital, and we do not possess all levels of care that a community treatment center may provide. Sometimes the best response we can give is to connect, assess and refer to providers in the community. Students needing specialized services or a higher level of care than the SCC can provide can access our referral network of off-campus providers. These services are not covered by tuition. Many of these providers accept the major health insurance carriers and, in some situations, offer reduced fee/sliding scale services based on income.