Individual Counseling
What is Counseling?
The campus environment can be exciting and challenging. It can also be highly stressful as social and emotional concerns can interfere with effective functioning and academic performance. The Counseling Services staff provides individual counseling to help students benefit from their college experience by enhancing their psychological health and personal effectiveness. Counseling is a unique, confidential and collaborative relationship between a trained helper and a person seeking help. The skills of the helper, the atmosphere created and strengths of the person seeking help work together to facilitate positive changes. Our staff helps students deal with a diverse range of mental health and developmental concerns. Many people, including highly successful ones, find significant benefits from counseling as they navigate periods of turmoil in their lives or work to enhance their quality of life.
Initial and Subsequent Appointments
You can call our office or come by in person to schedule an initial appointment. Our phone number is 717-361-1405, and we are located in Suite 216 in the Baugher Student Center. Urgent and crisis walk-in services are also available. During your first appointment you will complete information forms, discuss your concerns and goals with a therapist, and determine what services will be most effective. When indicated, we will help you connect with on-campus and/or community resources. Regarding subsequent appointments, please keep in mind that counseling is most effective when clients actively participate in establishing and working on treatment goals, completing assignments between sessions, and discussing difficult issues. If you have to cancel/reschedule an appointment, please do so 24 hours in advance so that another student might make use of that time. Counseling services are free to full-time students enrolled in the traditional academic program. If you are experiencing a mental health crisis outside of our office hours, please call Elizabethtown College’s Campus Safety at 717-361-1111. They can put you in contact with the Counseling Services on-call therapist.
Confidentiality
The personal information you share with your therapist is confidential in accordance with Pennsylvania mental health laws, professional ethical codes, and federal privacy regulations. The Counseling Services staff works as a team and may engage in professional consultation with each other and the consulting psychiatrist to ensure that you receive the best help possible. Outside of the exceptions listed below, no information about you or your attendance in counseling is released to parties outside of Counseling Services without your written permission.
The exceptions to this rule of confidentiality are the following:
- If you are clearly likely to do physical harm to yourself or another person in the near future, it is your therapist’s duty to take steps to protect your safety and the safety of others.
- If you share information about currently-occurring abuse or neglect of a child or dependent adult, state law requires that your therapist report the information to the appropriate state agency.
- If ordered to do so by a judge as part of judicial proceedings, Counseling Services may release information contained in your counseling record.