Due to increased demands placed on university counseling centers (UCCs) in recent years, there is a need for these centers to enhance the efficiency and effectiveness of their psychological services. Regularly monitoring client progress is one approach to increase the likelihood of positive clinical outcomes. This article describes the use of the…

This article introduces Yii-nii Lin, Professor in the Center for Teacher Education at the National Tsing Hua University in Taiwan, and prior director of the university's counseling center for a 3 year term. She has worked as a university counselling psychologist for more than 15 years when she participated in an online interview that…

Therapists in the field of college mental health counseling commonly voice an ambivalent orientation towards the utilization of formal psychological diagnostic systems yet often use diagnostic terms. Knowledge of the current and emerging diagnostic systems may contribute to greater syntheses of these differing approaches. This article will first…

This article reports on the integration of psychotherapy in a comprehensive dropout prevention program developed at the Dean of Students' office of Ben-Gurion University of the Negev in Israel. The program's psychologists conducted psychotherapy with a subset of dropout prevention program participants who had reacted with emotional…

This article shares a series of personal observations and anecdotes about central issues in college mental health in China based on my Fulbright year there. There are many cultural and structural forces that both support and constrain the growth of the mental health field in China. This article addresses these forces in terms of their impact on…

This article presents an online interview about college psychotherapy at a Hong Kong counseling center. The interview discusses how students generally feel about going for counseling or therapy and how common it is in Hong Kong.

Two related studies addressed college students' persistence and progress in psychotherapy. In Study 1, using emotional health variables assessed at intake, students who persisted in counseling and demonstrated clinical improvement were compared with those who either did not return for their first session or who did return but stopped before…

Ideally, students requesting services should be seen quickly at their university counseling center to increase the likelihood of a successful treatment outcome. However, in these times of ever-increasing demand for university counseling services and the challenges of securing resources to keep up with that demand, the reality of prompt…

We surveyed undergraduate college students from the psychology subject pool (N = 73) about where they would refer a depressed friend for help. Students from this sample were most likely to refer friends to the counseling center followed by social support options. Students were comparatively least likely to refer to other professionals, indicating…

In this article, the author shares her thoughts about the need to maintain certain philosophical foundations of counseling center theory and practice taught to her by her mentors and rooted in what was once the "radical" thinking of the mid-1970s. She feels compelled to speak about this because she is noticing that fewer and fewer of her peers…

This article identifies what student mental health professionals need to know about legal issues of relevance to threat assessment and management. The article summarizes the common law duties and the common law and statutory standards of care that are likely to apply to the work of college and university threat assessment and management teams. The…

A recent article in the "Chronicle of Higher Education" by Brian Van Brunt (2012) and a follow-up article by M. David Rudd (2012) have raised questions for college and university mental health professionals. Van Brunt takes the position that college counselors should broaden their scope of care and work with more difficult students, no matter how…

This article provides an overview of threat assessment and management as implemented on campuses of higher education. Standards of practice and state calls for implementation are cited. An overview of some of the basic principles for threat assessment and management implementation is accompanied by examples of how they are utilized. Pitfalls…

This article discusses and illustrates with case examples the impact on the college experience for students who have impaired--medically or mentally ill, substance abusing, developmentally disabled--siblings. Although these students often show resilience and a well-developed sense of compassion, they may also struggle with developmental tasks of…

University counseling centers are faced with the challenge of effectively treating bipolar students while also utilizing brief treatment frameworks and managing high patient volumes. Potential destabilization, particularly within the elevated mood phase, poses significant behavioral management issues for university clinicians and administrators,…