Grad School 101: Counseling Services at Rackham

Laura, thanks for being with me. >> Well, thank you. Oops, let me just hit this. Thank you, Paul. And thanks everyone. Welcome. Um as Paul mentioned, my name is Laura Monschau and I am the CAPS Embedded Psychologist um for Rackham Graduate School. And I will talk in more detail about what it means to be embedded and all of those things, but I wanted to start out by saying that um CAPS, we're going to use a lot of acronyms, which is classic University of Michigan, but it's Counseling and Psychological Services. And as the name implies, it's all things mental health for um uh for students in general U of M, graduate and undergraduate. And as you see from the icon on top, we have we're it's actually University Health Counseling. That's the umbrella that we're under because a couple of years ago Counseling and Psychological Services merged with our University Health Services. So, they used to be UHS and CAPS. Now, our acronym of the larger umbrella is UHC. So, you'll see some of that on the slides. Um and I love an interactive presentation, so feel free to jump in or ask questions. Um whatever feels right for you. But, I'm going to go ahead and get started. Oops. And I'm going to quickly just talk a little bit about mental health with graduate students, what we know, what our trends, those sort of things. Do some myths and facts about graduate student mental health. And reason why folks come to CAPS. And and do just a general sort of overview about topics around mental health and things that may be things to watch out for as you move forward in your first year of graduate studies. And then of course, as Paul mentioned, I'm going to talk a lot about what is CAPS, what are the services, how to get to those. All of those important things. And I'll stay afterwards to answer any questions. But, without any other, we'll just move right ahead. And I'm going to start with the questionnaire, so if you guys want to play along with me, if not, I will answer it, but this is meant to be um something that's shared. Um and hang on 1 second. Um according to National College Health Reports, what percentage of college students reported getting less than 8 hours of sleep on average weeknights over the past 2 weeks? 45, 55, 65, or 75 plus percent? What do you guys think? And the answer is 75%. I don't think that people are going to necessarily be surprised by that, but the reason why I wanted to start with this slide is we know that sleep and wellness is incredibly important, and if you're not getting enough sleep, it's really hard to function academically, let alone it affects mood of all sorts. And this is one of these behavioral things that are really helpful to to move into, and we'll talk about resources for sleep as you're moving forward. The next one is according to a study, how many folks, and this is actually undergrad and grad, how many folks at UVM feel like they have a sense of feeling sad, blue, anxious, or or nervous frequently? Any thoughts about that? Okay. The answer is 76%. Again, anxiety and sleep go hand in hand, and it's one of these things that we want to really highlight between normal lines how much anxiety um really impacts, and it's one of the primary reasons both graduate students and students in general are reaching out to CAPS as for services around anxiety. It gets stressful. Next. How about how many percentage of, and this is actually graduate students, sometimes experience a sense of isolation or left alone, feeling more isolated more days than not? Any thoughts? And that is 64% and actually some other studies that we did here at CAPS of graduate students only had that higher, almost closer to 80%. And what we know is that isolation and all of those sort of things makes life more makes academics harder, makes everything harder. And we also know it's particularly problematic for graduate students. So we really in this early days, I wanted to put this in here to encourage you as you're getting through orientations, going to the Rackham orientation, meeting folks in your department, to really try to make the effort to build some social networks of peers early on. Harder Easier said than done, but really important. And then lastly, how many grad Oh, actually there's not lastly. I have one more. This is graduate student specifics. How many people at graduate students feel significant anxiety? That is 92% and there's some stats that we'll talk about a little bit. Anxiety is particularly salient in graduate student life. So we want you to do some things to kind of prevent and keep keep keep wellness um in a good place early. And then lastly, we're going to talk about what this means, but I'm going to assume you all know a little bit about imposter syndrome, imposter phenomena. But um wondering what you think of how many times graduate students um experience imposter phenomena? Which is a sense of feeling like I don't belong here, I made a mistake, I'm not meant to be here. And what we see is approximately 64% and there's a lot of actually dialogue that that may be a low number, that some people feel that more than others. But it can make a big difference of feeling like you don't deserve to be here, you are faking it, that sort of thing. It can really impact mental health. So I just wanted to make room to talk about that as well. Any questions so far? Surprises? Okay. So now, I'm just going to quickly list what are common stressors for graduate students. And excuse this icon, I kind of like I I it kind of cracks me up, but it lists sort of things that can cause stresses, like common stressors for a graduate students. Transition to graduate student school. So we know that there are these unique times where graduate students struggle more than others. And one of them is exactly where a lot of people, like yourselves, are now, which is the beginning and the orientation. And that's why folks like Paul and his office is really working at Rackham to help support because the transition can be very hard, not only logistically, but just personally as well. Financial strain. It takes a lot to get here for folks. It also, um, you know, being worried about funding and paying personal expenses or other kind of things can be stressful. Increased responsibilities. Working really hard and having a lot to a lot to adjust to can be really, really difficult. Next, mit- greater academic demands. Moving into, um, uh, graduate life meaning people are often have already done a lot of work, but it continues to be difficult. Next, cohort and advisor relationships. You know, we talked about feeling isolated, but then often times people sometimes reach out to CAPS for feeling like they have difficulty either with peers in the program or advisors. Both are relationships, sets of relationships that have enormous potential to help and provide support, but can often be difficult. So we wanted to make sure, and when I say we, Counseling and Psychological Services, wanted to make sure that you think about that as both a possible it's to reach out for for both for when it's difficult or to reach out to develop those relationships with advisor or academic peers for support. Next, competition among peers. We see that a lot. Um, you know, that idea of wanting to really do well. You have You know, you you compete to get here, frankly. I mean, we need to own that. And it also means at times that that can be stressful and and be tiring. Um, dissertation. I don't think any of you are at that phase, but performance anxiety, wanting to do well. And imposter phenomena, like I mentioned. And then there's a little like lightning at the bottom of um, lots of other things of um, like what else we could add. And I invite each of you to if there's something you want to add of that to let me know. And then cross-cultural adjustment is another one for people coming from different places around the world, which is awesome, or just moving in general, very, very hard. Any other thoughts or reactions? Okay. Oops, I just missed one. Perfectionism, I forgot one, sorry. We'll talk about that in a little bit more detail in a minute, but perfectionism, people don't get to this high-achieving place of reaching a doctoral program or graduate program um, masters and doctoral program but without having being able to really work hard and wanting to do as best you can, but there's ways to do that better than others. And then microaggressions and um, other factors. Any thoughts? Okay. Oops, sorry. Keep having trouble with my And so, just to kind of repeat into that, we have a lot of These are things about feeling stressed, self-doubt, imposter phenomena, etc., performance test anxiety. Any surprises here? Okay. So, I had mentioned about the rates of anxiety. And this is a really famous study that came out in um and has been replicated since then talking about anxiety and depression with graduate students compared to their peers in the general population, so non-students basically. And what we know is that anxiety and depression meeting criteria for generalized anxiety disorder or depressive symptoms is markedly higher and you'll see it in the graph on the right um for graduate students than general population. And I don't mean to sound like a downer, but it's just important to know. And what we know is that this is this is stressful. You're you're really, you know, not playing it safe by starting graduate school. It's an one beautiful um exciting time, but it also is hard. And what we know is that getting some support um get doing wellness activities, taking care of yourself help minimize the risk of depression and anxiety. So, that's why we're talking about this now. And I'm going to go through in these next few slides just doing a little kind of a sampling of things that we see that can help that are both common themes for graduate students with mental health and what can be helpful. And one of the things that has come that has been born out in research time and time again is around perfectionism. And again, we know that perfectionism um is common with with doctoral students, with graduate students, masters and PhD students. But what we want to encourage is to think about healthy perfectionism versus non-so-healthy perfectionism. We want to think about how to For healthy perfectionism means you challenge yourself, but you actually learn from your failure. You're not going to be perfect, but you keep striving while continuing to grow and learn and be open. Unrealistic or maladaptive perfectionism is it's unrealistic goals and it's either if you don't get it perfectly, it's all bad. It's sort of this all or nothing thinking and it can be really hard to get out of. And so we really want to encourage talking about healthy perfectionism and we have a group at CAPS around perfectionism that I just wanted to mention. Imposter syndrome like I mentioned is very common. We we it's it's classically called imposter syndrome but we also call it phenomena. It's very ubiquitous but it's a lack of belief of not of of feeling like you don't belong, you don't deserve to be here, you got here by mistake, feeling like a fraud. And we won't get into examples too much but it's this idea of saying like any accomplishments in the past are a fluke, if you know, you got in by accident, you fooled them versus being capable, all of those sort of things. And we know that this is actually more common for other for some folks with in in less represented communities, lots of other reasons and it's actually really important to think about. And as the late great Maya Angelou said, who was an amazing obviously author and incredible woman wrote, "I've written 11 books but each time I think uh-oh, they're going to find me out now." It's this idea of no matter what it that's part of it, a part of the journey is to doubt but to imagine no matter how much you've accomplished like Maya Angelou, to feel like you're challenging yourself and to keep moving forward anyway. And she really embodies that. She talks about this a lot in her biographies. Um also looking at this idea of your relationship with stress, we're not going to have time to get into this much but just to remember that some stress is optimal, that you're if you don't have any stress, it means you don't care and it doesn't mean you're challenging yourself. You're all challenging yourself to be here but what we want to think about is how to keep it in this middle ground stress, to be motivated, to be energized, even be a little bit tense about a presentation or a test or this sort of thing. What we want to do is keep it so it's not in the extreme, and that's where some of the wellness can come in. Okay? And then we're going to get into like what happens when you get stressed too thin. What's too much, right? You can feel burnout. You can feel exhausted. You can feel like you just can't do it. You feel kind of numb. These sort of things that can happen, and those are signs to watch out and to reach out for some place like CAPS or taking care of yourself. And we want you to think about, excuse me, to build resilience, a sense of having some reserves when you've been struggling, and I think that's really important. So, to look for a growth mindset of optimism, regulating emotions, those sort of things, and counseling can be a helpful space for that. And we want to think about wellness, self-care, and to really maybe think about this time at the right at the eve of the start of the school year to begin to think of what are the things that you can do that are deeply responsible to do to keep yourself full, like the statement on the on the screen, like you cannot drink from an empty cup. Like how to keep yourself full. Um so that you can keep moving because this is a long task. And how to maybe think about goals. You know, you probably all know about SMART goals, but be realistic, set boundaries, be protective of your time to say I'm going to give myself nights and weekends. Give yourself time to say it's actually deeply responsible to socialize so that you can actually get more energy to return to the work. What we don't want to do is keep having folks keep doubling down to for more work. Listen to your body. Listen to the needs. Your own personal needs. Um the other thing is to be kind to yourself, to have self-compassion. Move in these directions. We These are all separate presentations. This is just a little overview. Other thing is to be self- being self-cash compassionate meaning like giving yourself empathy versus being a tyrannical kind of sense of connection to yourself, but it can really be help with motivation, reduce stress, and increase resilience. And other things just to think about that we know it's really born out in the literature is that one of the things that mitigates stress is a graduate student is to be present focus focus mindfulness on your academic and personal life. Notice your triggers, be less judgmental, and realize that everything pass everything has as a big as a beginning middle and end. And to challenge those really entrenched thoughts of perfectionism or imposter femina phenomena, the think technique, the acronym you're probably all familiar when you have a a negative thought, is it true, helpful, inspirational, or inspiring, necessary, or kind, and to be tolerant of yourself. Okay, another way to say it, be really careful around over identification versus intentionality. The other thing is like we said to break isolation and be connected to others and also have that in your thought patterns as well. And move from self-judgments such as I'm lazy or whatever to I'm working hard as I can. I think this is a really important slide to just look at how your speaking to yourself changes things. I'm so sorry, it's making too much noise. I keep wanting to shut that off. Um, but these are just some really good examples from a cognitive perspective perspective from each of these layers, the left to the right, the movement towards a a kinder way of being with yourself. But now I'd like to take the next little bit of time to talk a little bit about CAPS, Counseling and Psychological Services like I've met. The very basic is that our main office is at the Michigan Union, which is um, uh, uh, on State Street. You've probably all been there or if you have not, you will be soon. Um, Um, not far from the, um, the, the Rackham Building, but it's on State Street. We're on the fourth floor of the Michigan Union. The hours are Monday through Friday, um, and actually starting in the school year, um, we are open until 6:00. So, for people who, um, have more time to, um, uh, would prefer late afternoon or evening, we can do that. And our website, please check us out on the website, and the well, there's the phone number. Okay? And then, what does CAPS offer? So, generally, we offer brief solution-focused therapy. Um, what it does not mean is that we have session limits. That's often a misnomer. Um, we actually, um, we actually have discretion to decide how long we work with folks. Um, and in particular, the embedded programs, which I'll talk about a little bit, which I'm a part of, um, you can actually, um, you have a little bit more flexibility there. But in general, it's brief solution-focused therapy, and that's individual counseling, also relationship counseling, so meaning, um, romantic partners, roommates, etc. We're very open about the diet, but what relationship counseling with some, with a significant other. One person just has to be a student, as well as group counseling. We have a wonderful group program. Definitely check out our website. Um, in about two or three weeks, we should have our new group offerings for the fall. We also have very cool workshops, drop-in groups, we have affinity groups, um, we have a lovely, um, uh, drop-in group monthly luncheon series for men of color, international students, women of color, lots of very, um, very, very cool, um, identity-based groups that are more, um, are not meant to be therapy, they're meant to be connecting, because we know that helps with mental health. We also do um, specialized suicide prevention training program called QPR and we do that for academic departments, student groups, etc. We also, and this is really important to remember, we have so we have schedule those are all like the the individual counseling there group is that is all those are all scheduled appointments, but if there's ever more of an immediate need, we do have both virtual and in-person walk-in services anytime CAPS is open. Um most of my colleagues that meet that um their offices reside in at the union um offer walk-in counseling and takes turns she being in a shift to either answer questions or if there's immediate crisis you need to see someone immediately, you can do that. And all you do is either walk in or um call the number and you can just literally say I'm I'm interested in meeting with someone I'd like to talk to them by the phone, I'd like to talk them at to them in Zoom. You can also go to our website which is listed on this PowerPoint and you can choose the icon for urgent appointment, okay? And you'll be connected with a counselor. The other thing is that life doesn't always happen Monday through Friday 8:00 to 6:00 and if you ever have anything during nights or weekends, we also any times CAPS is closed 24 hours a day, seven times seven days a week including nights, holidays, we also always have available therapists via phone who answer for immediate phone call situations and that's by you calling the number that's listed, the main CAPS number and pressing zero to speak to a mental health professional. And we say if it's an absolute psychiatric emergency, we have UVM hospital has psychiatric emergency service, but if someone's having a hard time or not sure if they should call PS, absolutely call our after hours urgent support. Any questions so far? Okay. Um this is just a little visual if it helps to talk about different types of treatment that people need. The first one is universal. These are the kind of things on the left that all of us are helpful for everyone no matter where you're at in mental health needs and they're like screenings like gosh I'm feeling down and I'm feeling like you know I should look at something. Identity support um like I was saying those affinity based groups all of those building communities etc. etc. Peer programs, peer support also good education outreach self-care tools. These are things that are available we all need at all times. And CAPS has those like I mentioned through all of this programming that we have. And then we have this middle of the road think about this image as a road the middle is more like specific thing which is counseling, coaching, critical urgent care in instances. This is sort of recovery like for alcohol and other drugs this sort of things case management I need a referral from some place. That's more in focused support that making an appointment at um CAPS or university health services the medical side of health those are or or the wellness actual we'll talk about that in a minute. Those are all helpful specific identified interventions. The universal piece on the left is available all the time and these the other things are the middle of like certain very specific times when you may need it. Sometimes people are graduate students and they have more active and intensive ongoing care. They may need inpatient psychiatric support. They may need very intensive weekly or ongoing for the whole time they're at um at University of Michigan. There and other kind of alcohol and other drug recovery, etc., etc. There are amazing places in the community that provide that really long, long-term support, and CAPS can be a place to talk about where to find those options, if that's helpful. Any questions with that? Okay. So, here's just a little picture of CAPS is in front of the the University of Michigan Student Union, like I mentioned. Um we are a very diverse staff. We include um diverse identity-wise, specialty-wise. We also are social workers, psychologists, licensed professional counselors. We're all generalists, but we all have we also have specific folks that have issues around um specialization around anxiety, depression, eating dis- eating concerns, alcohol and other drugs, graduate student mental health, etc. The other thing I just wanted to mention briefly is this um I've been we've been talking you've been hearing the term embedded therapist. I am an embedded psychologist. Um so, what we did started about I think it's about maybe 14 years ago, we decided in addition to our main office, which has a lot of the counseling staff for CAPS, we wanted to embed mental health providers in various um uh departments settings throughout the University of Michigan. And we developed the CAPS embedded therapy model. And so, most colleges have an a CAPS embedded therapist. I am, as Paul mentioned, um the CAPS psychologist embedded for Rackham. So, I work with all graduate students who are part of Rackham. So, that's that's a really I love my job. I'm very accept- very grateful and honored to be able to do that. And I work with graduate students. I provide my individual counseling, educational support, etc. All of those things through my office in the Rackham building or virtually, but I only work with Rackham students. As a as a Rackham graduate student, it's really interesting cuz so you have lots of options. We'll talk about that in a minute, but basically you can work with somebody at the main union office. You could also work from Rackham. We also have um many of like if you were a Rackham student in the School of Music, we have an embedded therapist for the School of Music or engineering or education. There's just lots of different options and our CAPS website has all of us as providers listed and you could decide who you want to work with. The nice um advantage of working with embedded counselors is that they really have expertise in the specific school or college. And so in my case, it's graduate student mental health working with Rackham, but um if for example, the School of Music example that I mentioned, that person really understands the nuances of being a graduate student in School of Music, which I think is nice. Nursing, etc. There's so many. And the the complete list is on our CAPS website. The other thing I wanted to make sure that each of you know and tuck this away for down the road is that in addition to all the CAPS services, um we actually work with an organization called You Will. And You Will is something that is an option to act to to help connect University of Michigan students, undergrad and a graduate, with a a counselor when they're away from campus or they um like so let's say that you're doing field work out of state and you want to work with a counselor, but you can't work with someone at CAPS because it's out of state, even internationally. You Will is a program that helps match um students with a You Will uh professional um mental health professional. And they have people throughout the world. So to help navigate that. So that's something to about. And if you have more information about check our website, reach out to me. I can tell you more, but particularly this is helpful for graduate students who travel for work, go on a fellowship someplace. It can be really helpful. We also have a peer counseling program, which is very cool to look at really common supports that peers can be helpful with. And we also have some specific peer counseling for a graduate students, which can be useful. Um oh, I forgot to finish filling out the end on the lower left, which is G Spec. So, we'll talk about that in a second. These are just some things that these this this PowerPoint will be available when you're finished or when we're finished, but things that are available for our support. There's CAPS, Dean of Students, UHC. I've already mentioned CAPS and UHC, but we also have Safe Pack, Wolverine Wellness, wonderful for some of these wellness initiatives. And G Spec is the graduate student program office at Rackham. I think you'll be hearing from them one of these days. They're really helpful. From everything from uh emergency graduate student funding to issues within your graduate program. I work closely with them. CAPS and G Spec works very closely together. Just wanted to give a follow up for that. And that that's really all I have at this point. Um but actually oh, actually I needed to tell you I'm sorry. I can't wrap it up yet. I want to talk about going back to CAPS and what we do. You can actually schedule an appointment at CAPS by going to the email on the screen right now, and you can choose a counselor to schedule an appointment with. If you are interested in working with an embedded counselor you go oh, I'm so sorry. I keep trying to shut this off and it's not working. Um if you would like to schedule something with an embedded counselor for example me. Um I actually don't always have my um availability listed online. You would just email me directly. And my email is at the top of this um the PowerPoint. It's lauralm@umich.edu. You will also see a list of the emails on the CAPS website. Um but remember you have a range of people that you can go see. So you can schedule online, you can call the office to schedule, or you can email any embedded counselors directly to schedule if that feels okay. So, that is where we have it. And I'm going to just now I'm going to go back and make sure this before we move into ending the presentation, just take a deep breath. Definitely remind yourself to take care of yourself and hopefully to feel motivated to kind of think about having a plan not only for your academic self as you move into graduate studies, but also your well-being in a more general sense. And that is what I have. Does anyone have any questions? Feel free to either, you know, speak up or put it in the chat and I can read it. It's really whatever works for you. Oh, I see a question. Let me get it here. So, there's a question what types of group counseling are usually available? We have a really thriving group counseling program. So, we have um I'm just going to list some samplings of it. We always have a kind of a general like a graduate like under it's called understanding self or others. It's basically just a very typical process therapy group for exclusively graduate students, which is really nice. We have a parallel for undergraduates. We also have things on perfectionism, uh like I that sort of looking at building more adaptive perfectionism versus maladaptive perfectionism that I mentioned earlier in the slide. We have an imposter phenomena group. We have um an ADHD support group. And last time I heard you don't actually have to have a diagnosis. It's like you think you have ADHD exploring skills. We have a um uh autism spectrum group. We have an anxiety toolbox, which is like a short-term brief work on anxiety. We have a social anxiety group. We um I have historically run a mindfulness meditation group. Um we have affinity like identity-based groups like um uh a black women support group, uh LGBTQ groups of various like beautiful groups along those lines. Lots of different options. Um uh So, that's just a sampling. Definitely check our website um for more information. Yeah, any other questions? And I want to make sure I answered the questions like practically how to find us. I didn't want to skim over that. So, feel free to ask if there's any if you have any clarifications. Uh Yes, um Shawn um asked if that he wasn't able to get in the beginning. And there from uh from what I understand this with the recording of this will be available. And feel free to reach out to me as well. Um each of you I'm just going to put my um name in the chat again. Feel free to email me um as well as um to either schedule appointment or ask for any follow-up questions. It's part of my role as an embedded psychologist. I'm here in any way to support you and help you get where you need. Great. Wonderful. I'm going to stop sharing because you don't need to see that anymore. Anybody have any further questions? And I believe um we are all set. Wonderful. Thank Thank you and I'll hang out just for a couple of minutes in case anybody has anything they want to ask that the once the recording is off.