As a child, Xiomara Garcia, 21, thought that frequenting a university for four years was out of reach.
His parents had never completed their secondary studies and the financial means were limited. But she was there-a specialization in bio-engineering at the University of Santa Clara with a generous scholarship.
In some of her lessons, she was the only person in color. “It was like the biggest cultural shock in my life,” said Garcia.
She began to worry about being an impostor who had no place. Then a family member died. All this, added to a stressful course charge and an unresolved childhood trauma, made it difficult to control his emotions.
She tried online therapy, but finding a place to connect to her private sessions, far from her roommate, turned out to be difficult. Once, she spoke to her therapist by video from the bottom of a staircase on the campus, a few steps from a coffee. Finally, she decided to see someone in person.
Her new therapist had an office in the dormitory where she had lived during her first year. The space included shells and rocks that his therapist had found, as well as sifted lighting, comfortable chairs and a basket of snacks-a welcome change between hiding in a very frequented building or braving the clinical environment of the main consulting center, she said.
An increasing number of mental health professionals on campuses, often called “integrated advisers”, are now working in dormitories and other university buildings. Schools claim that this configuration reduces stigma linked to obtaining aid while making advisers more visible and accessible at a time when 37 % of students say they are struggling with depression. In a recent survey of directors of school board centers, nearly a third party said they had recourse to integrated advisers, compared to 20 % five years earlier. This change shows how colleges rethin the way they provide mental health care, adopting a model designed to meet students where they are, ideally before they are confronted with a crisis.
“I used to come and cry every week,” said Garcia about her first advice sessions. Today, two years later, she adds, she feels more confident and better able to manage her feelings. If she had not found a therapist with a warm and welcoming and quickly accessible cabinet, she might not have continued to follow therapy, she said.
Night visits
In schools like Virginia Tech, located in a rural area between Blue Ridge and Allegheny Mountains, the campus advisers are a life buoy for many students, because the therapists outside campuses are rare. But the main advice office is about 15 minutes walk from dormitories and has traditional office hours, which can make the task of occupied students who wish to make an appointment difficult.
There are now four integrated advisers working in a campus dormitory that accept visits until 10 p.m.
In the evening, while the day full of a student is coming to an end, “everything else resurfaces“, said Claire Cabellos, assistant director of the integrated council at Virginia Tech. “Mental health attacks do not occur from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m.”
Since the introduction of integrated advisers and other mental health initiatives on campuses, there have been fewer calls from crisis outside normal hours and resident assistants, also known as student leaders, have been more inclined to resume their role, said Cabellos.
Student leaders were exhausted and stressed after being approached by students with urgent mental health problems, she said.
During the university year 2024-25, five integrated advisers saw 391 students for a total of 1,805 sessions. In 2022-2023, inaugural year, four integrated advisers saw 200 students and organized 504 sessions. Some students even present themselves in pajamas.
Having integrated advisers nearby – and available late at night – was of great help for Rosi. Escobar, 21, a student leader whose residence is mainly filled with first -year students. She oriented several students to the advisers, including one who suffered from a panic crisis and another who had not risen of the week.
“I’m not the type to detect all these problems and solve them myself,” she said.
Providing accessible and rapid mental health care to a large student population can represent a huge challenge for colleges and universities. The data from the most recent Healthy Minds survey, which was carried out online by more than 84,000 students of colleges and universities across the country, revealed that only 47 percent of students who have declared positive screening for anxiety or depression declared that they had received advice during the past year.
Those who have not received aid have cited obstacles such as limited time, not knowing where to go, financial obstacles and the difficulty of finding an appointment, among other problems.
A sympathetic dog and an open door
Kristin Tappan, a graduate of the University of Santa Clara who is now there therapist, is a familiar presence for many students. She is often accompanied on the campus by her dog, a Maltipoo named Tiramisu, and we sometimes find her distributing homemade lemon bars to students while presenting themselves. It helps “Make things feel a little more like at home,” she said.
“The doors are simply much more open than I think they have never been before,” she said.
In one of its offices, arranged like a family room, students snuggle up in an armchair with tiramisu nearby and talk about everything: what is to live far from their family, relationship problems, academic stressors and concerns about life after obtaining their diploma. But often, said Tappan, deeper problems surface, such as family trauma, such as abuses, or drug or alcohol problems.
“There are so many things below the surface,” she says.
Although there are several advantages in placing therapists in university environments or in dormitories, the role can be particularly difficult..
Melissa Bottiglio, therapist and assistant director of the Embedded program at the University of Colorado in Boulder, worked with a team to investigate providers integrated into the United States and Canada in 2024 and discovered that advisers who work alone in university buildings or dormitor The life of the campus.
“The advisers must be firm as for the start and the end of the scope of their care,” she said.
But when a school finds a formula that works, integrated advisers can attract students who otherwise hesitate to ask for help. Therapists can also adapt programming to specific campus groups.
The Iowa University currently has two integrated therapists who support students in 11 university residences. And the Ohio State University now has 18 integrated clinicians spread over its campus.
The integrated advisory program of the Arizona University, which started in 2020 with three advisers, currently has 12 advisers in places such as the Amerindian student affairs office, the Faculty of Medicine and the Veterinary Faculty.
Sarah Heinzl, a professional advisor approved in the AU, remembered an event on the campus where a student had looked right in the eyes and joked: “We will talk about it on Friday. Another student added: “My advisor is also there. »»
Later in the week, after seeing how their peers had used the consulting services, several students stopped at the office of Ms. Heinzl to ask questions about them.
“This is what the integrated advice does,” she said. “It breaks false ideas on therapy and normalizes advice as part of their world. And when they see that, more students present themselves to ask for help.”
