John DiMino

The Relationship Between Wait Time After Triage and Show Rate for Intake in a Nonurgent Student Population

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 appointments can be far different during most of the academic year. This study looked at the relationship between wait time after triage and show rate for intake at a large counseling center that uses a triage walk-in-clinic format for students accessing services. Although triage allows for an appropriate rapid response to the most at-risk students, we were concerned about attrition among “average” students seeking counseling, assessed as nonurgent at triage, during the wait for their intake. The current study found a statistically significant positive relationship for this nonurgent population between length of wait time after triage and no-show rate for the scheduled intake after triage. We present preliminary thoughts about these findings, discuss our study limitations, and pose future research questions.

Group Supervision of Supervision: A Relational Approach for Training Supervisors

The issue of training psychologists to become competent supervisors has only been clearly articulated in the past two decades. In this article a rationale for training supervisors in a group format is given. Then, a supervision of supervision group is presented that the authors co-led with two successive cohorts of four predoctoral interns in a large university counseling center as part of its training program. The authors focus on the need to attend to group process and relational themes. Finally, the authors discuss the inevitable boundary concerns that emerge given the multiple levels of relationships that exist among several tiers of trainees and supervisors.

Psychiatry Resident Rotations in University and College Counseling Centers: A Pilot Study of Rotation Types and Challenges

With an increased demand for mental health services, perceived increased severity of students presenting for services, and increased number of students prescribed psychotropic medications, university and college counseling center directors have had to increasingly identify psychiatric service options. Psychiatry residents can potentially help fill these needs. To better understand the role of psychiatry residents in university and college counseling programs, we conducted a web-based survey of United States psychiatry residency program directors. This study describes clinical activities and rotation characteristics of psychiatric residents working in counseling centers. Of the 48 residency programs that responded, 27 provide rotations at university or college counseling centers, and of those with rotations, 100% report that the residents rate these as very good or excellent. Expanding psychiatry residency rotations at college counseling centers may be mutually beneficial both to the centers and to psychiatric residents.

We Get It: Voices of Grieving College Students and Young Adults, by Heather L. Servaty-Seib and David C. Fajgenbaum

Thankfully, college campuses are usually quite lively and desirable places to live and work. However, on every college campus, some students who are grieving can’t engage in the excitement of college the way others do and often feel overwhelmed by the normal pulse of campus life. They may not look different from other students, but they may feel quite empty inside, stay to themselves and perhaps cry themselves to sleep–that is, if they allow themselves the luxury of showing their pain at all. The abundance of opportunities on college campuses, juxtaposed with the inner emptiness and isolation that they feel, presents a stark contrast. The new book, We Get It: Voices of Grieving College Students and Young Adults, is a compendium of stories by young adults who grieved the loss of someone close, usually a parent, during their college years. The authors, Heather Servaty-Seib and David Fajgenbaum, have spent a good deal of their professional careers helping young adults manage grief through counseling, research, and advocacy (Heather). David also has created an organization that now consists of a nationwide grief support network at 200 college campuses. The energy and persistence both authors have displayed in their work stems partly from their personal experiences with grief. David lost his mother to cancer while attending Georgetown University and started the grief support network to honor her memory. Now he is an oncologist and professor of medicine at the University of Pennsylvania working in the area of cancer and rare diseases. In keeping with the format of the book, he offers insight into his own grief in the introduction, supplying a photo of himself with his mother and a description of the closeness they shared. For her part, Heather had the humble realization while doing bereavement work as a counselor at Purdue University that young adults didn’t need another grief book written by her, but rather a way to connect with other grieving students. Both authors understand that networking and empowerment are the answer for the loneliness and disconnection that those who are grieving may struggle with. Their concern for those they had not reached directly with their work led them to write this book. Aware of the influence that peers have for the young adult, they have collected bereavement stories written by young adults themselves. The many contributors (there are 33 of them) delve into the raw experience of their losses. Without the academic necessity of discussing theories or stages of grief, the writers are free to deliver something very personal, and as a result the book has a lot of emotional impact—I often found myself welling up with tears. The sheer impact of the stories is definitely the strength of this book and will be a gift to many young people who need a story similar to their own, written by someone near them in age, to make them feel sane and connected again despite their pain. For the college students in this volume, the experience of feeling alone in their grief seemed almost universal. Many believed that people around them could not possibly appreciate what they were going through. In the tumult of events leading up to their loss and its aftermath, many writers expressed how difficult it was to open up to others, notably their new friends and acquaintances at college. A few learned that while some peers were very supportive when they found out, others were not, leading to additional JOURNAL OF COLLEGE STUDENT PSYCHOTHERAPY 2016, VOL. 30, NO. 1, 75–76 http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/87568225.2016.1105673

Testing the Impact of Brief Counseling on Non-Urgent Client Self-Esteem, Social Connectedness, Recommending Their University and Active Alumnus Intent

The purpose of this study was to test brief counseling impact on four outcomes. Two outcomes, self-esteem and social connectedness, were more typical for a University Counseling Center (UCC) to address. However, two other outcomes were more related to a university’s academic mission, i.e., recommending the university and active alumnus intent. Using a longitudinal sample of 60 matched non-urgent undergraduate clients at a UCC, brief counseling increased all four outcomes: social connectedness, self-esteem, recommending the university, and active alumnus intent. For this study, brief counseling was defined as a median of three counseling sessions after intake (range 1 to 8) over a median period of six weeks (range 4 to 10 weeks). In addition, these scale means were compared to a control group of business undergraduates not in counseling. The counseled sample at Time 2 compared favorably to the non-counseled sample on recommending the university and active alumnus intent. To better support its students’ success and university enrollments, UCCs need to consider new avenues to promote their advocacy by gathering data more directly connected to a university’s mission.

Impact of Brief Counseling on Nonurgent Prior- versus Never-counseled Samples

ABSTRACT The purposes of this study were to distinguish prior- versus never-counseled nonurgent University Counseling Center (UCC) clients and to test if brief counseling had a differential impact on these two samples. The prior-counseled sample (n = 100) was more prepared for counseling, had a lower stigma for seeking help, as well as lower social connectedness and life satisfaction versus the never-counseled sample (n = 109). After brief counseling (median of four sessions after triage), the prior-counseled group (n = 33) had significantly higher social connectedness, self-esteem, and life satisfaction, while only social connectedness of the never-counseled group (n = 31) increased.

The Intern’s Experience as Supervisor: Managing Resistance, Identification, and Countertransference While Feeling Insecure

This article focuses on the experiences of predoctoral interns supervising the clinical work of less experienced externs in psychology and social work as part of a training program in a large university counseling center. After 4 years of running a relationally based supervision of supervision group, the authors believe that providing supervision during internship year to less advanced trainees and being supervised on the experience is a viable approach to develop supervisory competence and a highly valued aspect of internship training. However, we have also noticed that some well-known hindrances to effective supervision may be significantly exacerbated as intern and extern struggle with their new roles as supervisor and therapist. Several examples of these interns’ supervisory struggles are presented in the context of the concepts of resistance, identification, and countertransference. Naming and working through these obstacles to supervision, including feelings of rivalry that emerge between trainees who are close in professional development, are crucial to the success of these supervisory pairings.

The Interns Play: A Mimetic Approach to Introducing and Working with Countertransference in Professional Training

An approach is presented that introduces the concept of countertransference to predoctoral interns and externs in a unique way during their professional training. This approach goes beyond a didactic presentation of the concept and even beyond discussion of case material in supervision. Through an experiential role-play process called Mimesis, trainees are encouraged to enact scenes from literature that depict typical dilemmas that psychotherapists working in a psychodynamic framework must face. By using carefully chosen stories, supervisors can highlight aspects of the therapeutic process such as managing countertransference feelings. This approach fosters a more flexible and open inquiry into one of the most daunting aspects of professional development for both trainees and supervisors.