The Colorado Springs Gazette final

Colleges try to meet needs after tragedy

Campuses facing limited resources

BY NICK SULLIVAN nick.sullivan@gazette.com

Students often share a similar sentiment after tragedies like the shooting at Club Q, a longtime safe space for the LGBTQ+ community: “I’m lucky. I’m lucky it hasn’t been me.”

This response to violence is all too common among today’s generation of college students, said Whitley Hadley, director of the LGBTQ+ Resource Center and the Multicultural Office for Student Access, Inclusiveness and Community at the University of Colorado at Colorado Springs. Even so, students are not immune to trauma, no matter how commonplace.

Colorado Springs’ college campuses have grappled with how best to mobilize and support their students in the wake of a tragedy so close to home. Hadley worked closely with students in the week after the shooting that killed five and injured 17, saying many go to Club Q and some even had intentions of going that night.

“This can make people feel paused, can make people feel frozen,” Hadley said. “But this is also an opportunity for us to continue moving forward with the work and to continue supporting others and investing our strength in others who are doing work to create a stronger, more affirming community.”

Immediate coping resources and counseling are key, experts say, but such resources are seldom widely available.

The American School Counselor Association recommends a ratio of 250 students per 1 counselor. UCCS has 17 health care team members who can

provide counseling services, lending to a ratio of about 670 students per counselor, according to fall 2021 enrollment data.

Locally, Pikes Peak State College — with the largest enrollment in the Colorado Springs area — has only one staff counselor for all students.

To bridge the need gap, colleges can turn to outside contractors for additional mental health care support. Pikes Peak State College uses Better Minds, an online therapy service that can be accessed any time students are triggered by trauma, said Yolanda Harris, director of the Pikes Peak State College Counseling Center and its sole staff counselor.

Mantra Health, a digital mental health clinic, works with 110 university counseling centers across the country, including Regis University in Denver. The contractor helps ease the case load burden at its partner institutions by accepting student referrals. Whereas the wait time for an on-campus counselor can last weeks or longer, Mantra can often meet with a student within a couple of days, said Mantra Health vice president of clinical health Carla Chugani.

“We know our community of young people is going to be affected by it, so what do we do? How do we respond?” Chugani said. “Expanding availability of immediately available or quickly available services so that people do have somebody to talk to about what feelings it brings up, that’s very important.”

However, counseling should not be viewed as the be-all and end-all of mental health services, Chugani noted. Devoting centers to Lgbtq+-specific issues is another significant step in caring for a community that receives a disproportionate amount of hate.

“A lot of times in a big system or a big structure, there are these institutionalized inequities that occur,” Chugani said. “When you have a new structure that really develops specifically to be a safe place, and an inclusive and welcoming place for a certain group,

“A lot of people are numb right now because this is commonplace, and that’s the most depressing thing you can say, but it’s true.” Liss Smith, Spokesperson for Inside Out Youth Services

then they have a place that they hopefully feel safer and more comfortable going to.”

Liss Smith, a spokesperson for Inside Out Youth Services, which supports LGBTQ+ teens and young adults, highlights Colorado College’s Butler Center and the UCCS LGBTQ+ Resource Center as two “really, really good” examples of where college students can find support outside a counseling setting.

For those whose loved ones are struggling in the wake of this trauma or another, Smith said it is best to approach every conversation from a place of authenticity, especially with difficult topics. Friends and family should be honest about their own feelings to open a space for their loved ones to be honest right back.

“A lot of people are numb right now because this is commonplace, and that’s the most depressing thing you can say, but it’s true,” Smith said. “Young people know 100% when you’re Bs-ing them. They have a sixth sense for it, and it’s so much more effective and I think just better ethically to approach them and by like, ‘Hey, this is scary and awful, and I’m sad.”

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2022-12-03T08:00:00.0000000Z

2022-12-03T08:00:00.0000000Z

https://daily.gazette.com/article/281655374100008

The Gazette, Colorado Springs