Counseling Services at Penn State

    College can be tough for young adults living without their parents for the first time in their lives. There is a lot of self discovery that goes along with becoming independent. Some of these self discoveries can lead to fears and phobias young adults were not even aware of until they began living on their own. These fears may include psychological disorders such as, anxiety and depression. The American Psychological Association defines anxiety as worried thoughts and tension that result in physiological changes such as high blood pressure (Anxiety, n.d.). Depression is categorized as a mood disorder that may cause a variety of symptoms such as weight fluctuations, lack of interests in normally enjoyable activities, abnormal sleeping habits, feelings of worthlessness, and more (Depression, n.d.). Fortunately, both anxiety and depression are treatable with either counseling interventions, medication, or both. Specifically on college campuses, such as Penn State University Park, there are counseling services available to students in need. These counseling services are known as CAPS, which stands for Counseling and Psychological Services. CAPS at Penn State provides many helpful opportunities to students suffering from various anxiety and depressive symptoms to help them manage and mollify their psychological disorders.

The Counseling and Psychological Services department at Penn State provides a variety of programs such as both individual and group counseling, couples counseling, psychiatric consultations (for medications), mental health workshops such as stress management and bystander interventions, and drop in consultations also known as CAPS chat. CAP’s website also includes resources such as mindfulness techniques, self help videos, wellness trackers, and various coping mechanisms that have been proven to alleviate some common symptoms of anxiety and depression (Services, n.d.).

Concluding my senior year of high school, I was diagnosed with panic disorder. Panic disorder is a type of anxiety disorder where one repeatedly has episodes of fear and worry that seem to come out of nowhere. My personal struggles with anxiety led me to reach out to CAP’s during my whole first semester at Penn State. My anxiety and my erroneous beliefs of feeling trapped in an environment I did not feel comfortable in (Penn State) also lead to feelings of hopelessness and low self efficacy. Hopelessness can be defined as the lack of power perceived to change an undesirable situation (Needles & Abrahamson, 1990, p. 156). In my case, I did not believe I had the power to change my negative views of living at Penn State. Self efficacy can be defined as one’s level of confidence of success in a particular situation (Schneider, Gruman & Coutts, 2005).

Counselors at Penn State’s CAPS helped me alleviate some symptoms of my psychological disorder by introducing me to positive stable and global attributions to combat my negative attributions. Stable attributions are thoughts and beliefs that a person thinks will be present forever. Global attributions are thoughts and beliefs a person thinks that will affect many or all aspects of their lives (Schneider et, al, 2005). In my situation, some positive attributions I thought up with a counselor were that school is a safe environment for me and I am I will not be feeling this uneasy about school forever. In the end, replacing my negative attributions for positive ones helped me enjoy not only my time at school but my life in general too. Form personal experience, I can say counseling is beneficial for people who struggle with psychological disorders that interfere with daily living. After my counseling sessions, I can confidently say I am still a Penn State student currently living in State College keeping up with my school work and maintaining plenty of friendships and even entertaining a boyfriend. Penn State students are lucky enough to have this service at school because this is a critical time in our lives and it could easily become very overwhelming. That is why counselors are around to help people with psychological disorders cope.

References

Anxiety. (n.d.). Retrieved September 24, 2017, from http://www.apa.org/topics/anxiety/

Depression. (n.d.). Retrieved September 24, 2017, from http://www.apa.org/topics/depression/

Needles, D.J., & Abrahamson, L.Y. (1990). Positive life events, attributional style, and hopefullness: testing a model of recovery from depression.

Services. (n.d.). Retrieved September 24, 2017, from http://studentaffairs.psu.edu/counseling/services

Schneider, F. W., Gruman, J. A., & Coutts, L. M. (2005). Applied social psychology: Understanding and addressing social and practical problems. Thousand Oaks, Calif: SAGE Publications

2 comments

  1. Max Harrison Tremain

    I am so glad to hear that you found PSU CAP’s to be beneficial and that their services helped to mitigate some of your negative attributions. During my junior year, I had to do a project on counseling services at Universities and I was dismayed at the overwhelming lack of services at many universities. As you mention in your post, college can be incredibly stressful for a number of reasons, and so it is imperative for universities to have comprehensive counseling services for the students. I think Penn State has done a great job of creating a program that is accessible to all students and can be effective in helping students make the transition from high school to college. I hope that more universities across the country will begin to develop similar programs as I think student bodies really benefit from having these services at their disposal. Thank you for sharing your CAP’s experience with us.

  2. It’s good to hear that you got help for your panic disorders as I can relate as I have panic attacks as well. I am really impressed with the services available to students on campus as it sounds like really helpful and helps to cover a lot of the aspects of mental health that lots of places would ignore. I know that the University of Pittsburgh only was offering to counsel individually when I was there. As you stated The Counseling and Psychological Services department at Penn State provides a variety of programs such as both individual and group counseling, couples counseling, psychiatric consultations (for medications), mental health workshops such as stress management and bystander interventions, and drop in consultations also known as CAPS chat. CAP’s website also includes resources such as mindfulness techniques, self-help videos, wellness trackers, and various coping mechanisms that have been proven to alleviate some common symptoms of anxiety and depression (Services, n.d.). That sounds like a one-stop shop to help kids who are far away from home and could be experiencing things that may seem alien to them. It sounds like Penn State really is taking care of its students and helping to give them a path to wellness. I applaud their efforts and I am glad that you got to take advantage of them.

    Services. (n.d.). Retrieved September 24, 2017, from http://studentaffairs.psu.edu/counseling/services

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