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Shonte Elbert, Associate Vice President of Health and Wellness, Counseling and Counseling Services is serving students of color. Credit Amani Bio | Lantern Reporter
The Office of Student Life’s Counseling and Advising Services promotes a variety of services on campus for students from diverse backgrounds.
Shonte Elbert, associate vice president for health and wellness in the Office of Student Life, said in a presentation on the new psychological enhancement program, “Removing the Disadvantages of Black Mental Health,” that CCS offers a variety of care to meet needs beyond traditional methods. Black students.
Elbert said CCS implements culturally-based counseling that deals with issues that are common in the black community, such as low socioeconomic status and birth defects in mental health.
“Every aspect of public health — including psychology — is now starting to talk about the social issues of health and how it affects health care, mental health and well-being,” Elbert said.
Elbert said on-campus counseling needs to be more flexible and supportive of individual needs to meet the needs of diverse students with different social experiences.
“Nowadays, students of color come to campus with a lot of caution, which means that additional issues and counseling may not be the only option for them,” Elbert said. “If a student says, ‘I don’t want to take care of this traditional care,’ why can’t we read a tarot card on campus?”
Elbert said he sees an increasing number of students entering college who have no experience with any form of counseling and are reluctant or reluctant to seek it out. People of color, international students, veterans and people with disabilities, who are often historically marginalized, interact with mental health differently and experience stigma, Elbert said.
Tahj Linton, a fourth-year psychology student, said being involved in developing the program and knowing mentors who understand the need in the black community is encouraging to help overcome the stigma surrounding mental health.
“It means the world, validated by our experience,” Linton said. “I also go into these places, so I can build these relationships for our community and bring these conversations.”
Audia Fraley, a CCS clinical therapist, said it’s important to take cross-cultural approaches when providing counseling services such as connecting students to their communities, group counseling and random access.
“CCS can go through our list of community service providers and refer you to support that makes sense for your situation,” Fraley said. “That’s important because it’s not one-size-fits-all, so if it makes sense for you to connect with the greater Columbus community, we’ll help you do that.”
Fraley said the connection between the social experiences of the black community and their mental health is acknowledged and influences the services CCS provides.
“The black community is just as likely to experience socioeconomic disparities as other communities of color,” Fraley said. “When we looked at black college students, about 50 percent reported no mental health education.”
Linton encourages black students to seek out those services to find what’s best for them, regardless of what counseling services look like for each student — calling to vent, sharing experiences, or choosing a private, informal CCS counselor.
“Use black spaces and our black leaders because obviously they’re here to support us because they understand our experience,” Linton said.
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