INDIVIDUAL COUNSELING

PLU's Counseling Center offers short-term confidential counseling for individual students.  Counselors can make referrals for long-term therapy, specialized therapy, and medication.

OUR LEVEL OF CONFIDENTIALITY

Communication with your counselor will be kept confidential and will not be shared with anyone outside of the Counseling Center unless you give us written authorization to do so.  Your counseling records are not a part of your academic record, and which means no one other than the counseling staff will have access to your records.  There are a few rare times when exceptions to confidentiality are mandated or permitted by law.  For more information you can download and read our Notice of Privacy Practices/Disclosure Statement.  If you need a copy of your records to be sent to an outside medical provider or therapist, you can complete a Consent to Release Information form and send it to our office.

SCHEDULING A FIRST APPOINTMENT

Please call or stop by the center to make an intake appointment. Intake appointments are generally scheduled within a few days of making contact with our office, depending on the time of the semester.  If you feel that your concerns are urgent or life threatening, please express these feelings to the person scheduling your appointment.

We will need to gather a bit of information from you at the time of scheduling therefore, we ask that you call or stop by rather than e-mailing, so that we can have that dialogue with you. However we do welcome your e-mailed correspondence for any other reason.

When scheduling a first appointment, we will ask if you prefer a male or female counselor, and then schedule with whoever has an opening first. If you would like to request a specific counselor, please let us know.

At this time, we do not provide reminder calls for first time appointments, so please be sure to write down your appointment time in a prominent place.  If you need to cancel or reschedule for any reason, kindly give 24 hours of notice to our office so that another student may utilize the appointment time.

We ask that you arrive 15 minutes before your first appointment to complete the necessary paperwork.   Simply check-in at the front desk, and our administrative assistant will hand you the forms needed. 

After completing the intake paperwork, your counselor will meet you in the lobby and show you to his/her office.  Counseling sessions are generally 50-60 minutes per session, so when you make your appointment please be sure to plan your schedule accordingly.

DURING THE INTAKE APPOINTMENT

After a few brief formalities, you and the counselor will explore the concern(s) that caused you to come for a visit. Often, the counselor will want to learn about the overall context of your life, as it's easier to help you if we know this. Finally, you and the counselor will discuss the next step in terms of counseling but also other resources that may be helpful.

REFERRING SOMEONE ELSE TO COUNSELING SERVICES

We encourage parents, faculty, staff and peers to refer students whom they feel could benefit from our services. However, please be aware that due to confidentiality laws, we cannot schedule an appointment for the student through a third party, the student will need to contact us directly.  To learn more about recognizing when it is appropriate or necessary to refer someone to counseling services, please visit our page for Concerned Others.  If you would like to help a student schedule an appointment, you are welcome to walk them to our office, or be with them when they make the initial phone call to our office.