1.  Change in “walk-in” procedure.  Due to overwhelming number of students at times (sometimes up to 20 in an afternoon), we have decided to go to a scheduling system for these first contacts.  Thus, instead of continuing our first-come-first-serve/walk-in procedure, when students request a counselor now, we are scheduling those first “assessment” or triage appointments (20 minute appointments).  This applies to students who have never been to our services or would like to switch counselors.  The appointment system allows us to spread out the times when students are seen during the day, instead of the previously concentrated traffic during the afternoons.  We are making sure to have plenty of appointment slots available so that we can best fulfill the demand.

We do still have the emergency/crisis service where a student can just walk in for crisis, and that continues to be available M-F 8:30am-4:30pm.

2.  After-hours crisis services.  With the Mental Health Fee fund, we have contracted with an after-hours crisis agency (ProtoCall) who will help us answer those crisis calls when Counseling Services is closed.  Students, faculty, and staff can access the after-hours mental health crisis service by calling the Counseling Services main number, 408-924-5910, and the message will direct the callers to press the appropriate # to be connected.  We have provided ProtoCall with quite a bit of local resources contact info so that callers can be directed appropriately.  Counseling Services will also get a report of the calls the following morning so that we can follow up when appropriate.  Please feel free to give us feedback about how this system is working for you, and we will coordinate with ProtoCall.

3.  Additional website resources.   Please see below email from Tova regarding an extensive list of community resources that she has placed on the Counseling Services website.  She has done a tremendous job compiling these, so please pass the word.

In addition, you’ll see a few extra pages under our “Faculty/Staff” tab:  http://www.sjsu.edu/counseling/Faculty_Staff/index.html

This section now includes pages on “Managing aggressive behaviors,” “De-escalating aggressive behavior,” in addition to “Referring troubled or suicidal students.”