YHMC offers hybrid counseling, plans return to majority in-person services by end of academic year
As Yale Mental Health and Counseling begins its transition back to in-person services, student mental health advocates suggest potential reforms to the department.
Courtesy of Paula Pineda
As students return to in-person instruction, Yale Mental Health and Counseling has also opened up the option of in-person therapy, as well as a program with eight new clinicians — that nearly 1,000 students have utilized since its launch last spring.
YMHC is currently offering its standard array of services, which include individual, couples and group therapy. In addition, the new YC3 program has added eight new mental health professionals outside of the typical YMHC intake structure who are available for consultations with students. As YMHC begins to transition back to in-person care, student organizers for mental health reform see the period as an opportunity to propose reforms to YMHC services. They especially want to improve the availability and reliability of licensed counselors as the number of students seeking counseling has increased by nearly 70 percent since 2015.
“Any major transition is going to affect students’ mental health,” said Alicia Abramson ’24, an organizer with Mental Health Justice at Yale, a coalition that advocates for more accessible mental health services. “After a year and a half of a pandemic, when many students lost family or friends to COVID and everyone spent months trapped indoors, there’s bound to be challenges when returning to normalcy. This is a critical period for YMHC to be meeting student demand.”
YC3, an expansion to Yale’s mental health services that launched last spring, also currently offers hybrid services.
The YC3 team includes four clinicians and four community wellness specialists available for drop-in support to undergraduate students. College care clinicians are licensed psychologists and social workers, and community wellness specialists are non-licensed wellness professionals. Both serve as options to help students navigate mental health challenges, mostly providing service over a shorter period of time than YMHC professionals.
The community wellness specialists focus more specifically on short-term issues like sleep, stress or time management, according to community wellness specialist Corinne Coia.
“On the community wellness specialist side, we offer both in-person and virtual appointments to students and can meet with students around campus if students prefer,” Coia wrote in an email to the News. “We have hosted in-person workshops previously and hope to continue them this semester. We also plan to do in-person meet and greets in each residential college this semester to continue to make students familiar with our new program.”
Coia said that YC3 had 954 appointments since the program launched in the spring of 2021, adding that students have expressed appreciation for the “ease and accessibility” of YC3 services.
YMHC currently offers both virtual and in-person services, with all initial intake sessions occurring remotely but the option to conduct ongoing sessions in person. According to YMHC Director Paul Hoffman, the department hopes to provide the majority of its services in person by the end of the 2021-22 academic year, although the option to receive remote counseling will likely remain.
After virtual intake sessions, Hoffman said, students can decide whether or not to attend ongoing therapy in-person or over Zoom based on a clinical decision made in consultation with their therapist.
“I think some students would be happy to continue with virtual therapy and some will be very happy to return to seeing their therapist in person,” Hoffman said. “I think the important part is to get to the place where we can provide students the choice to select the treatment modality that works best for them.”
All students attending in-person sessions must be masked, and all clinicians must wear face shields in addition to masks. Hoffman noted that while research indicates that Zoom is an effective medium to provide therapy, there is little research as to how therapy is affected by face coverings, which obscure facial expressions.
Hoffman added that emergency consultations are currently available in person for students.
“We are still doing many things virtually including therapy groups,” Hoffman said. “We are hoping to add more and more in-person visits as the semester progresses because we get the sense that many students are wanting to return to in-person treatment and some Yale College students have difficulty finding private spaces in which to have virtual therapy sessions.”
Student mental health advocates said they are in favor of maintaining a virtual option for student care, suggesting that remote therapy offers greater flexibility and convenience to students.
Miriam Kopyto ’23, the director of the Yale Student Mental Health Association, noted that students who feel intimidated by the prospect of attending therapy might benefit from a virtual option.
“I have heard very different opinions for students’ personal preferences for Zoom or in-person,” Kopyto wrote in an email to the News. “One student might prefer online because it is less intimidating than physically going to YMHC, while others may find it easier to pay attention in in-person therapy. I believe that ultimately the ‘better’ choice comes down to the student’s preference and circumstance.”
Some advocates for mental health reform on campus pointed out that this period of time is particularly critical, as the broader transition from a virtual to an in-person college experience can pose unique mental health challenges.
“For many of us, this is our first time walking the halls of campus in nearly a year and a half,” President of Disability Empowerment for Yale Joaquín Lara Midkiff ’24 wrote in an email to the News. “For others, this is our first time away from home. For others still, the pandemic has been a pressure cooker — throwing the hardest of life’s challenges our way and we have yet to catch our breaths. But no matter what, all of us are different people now than we were in March 2020. Campus mental health services leave something to be desired in a so-called normal year, so in a year of transition and heightened anxiety the success of YMHC is paramount.”
The 2020-21 academic year saw renewed conversation surrounding the efficacy of Yale’s mental health services, especially in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic.
Lara Midkiff suggested some potential reforms for YMHC services, including broadening the range of conditions the department treats, expanding clinician staff and diversity, reducing wait times for appointments and reliably offering one-hour sessions.
“I think that YMHC can most effectively improve its services by ensuring that its providers are held accountable for getting back to students and keeping in touch with students,” Kopyto added. “One difficulty with online services is it’s even easier for providers to ignore emails, and more difficult for the student to get in touch with the front desk to ask for the provider to get in touch. YMHC could greatly improve its services by better organizing patient care, and place more responsibility on YMHC to not lose contact with students.”
Instructions to make an appointment with YMHC can be found online.
