Leaving seasonal depression behind with the arrival of warmer spring days, Oakland University students gathered at Oakview Hall to learn about mental health resources and unwind at the Rise of the Grizzlies event.
Put on by the Counseling Center (CC), the wellness fair brought therapy dogs, arts and crafts, free food and mental health resources to students who might be feeling under the weather by the end of the semester.
“The theme is kind of like a ‘come out of a hibernation’ event and I want to give full credit to my undergraduate interns,” Counseling Center Director David Schwartz said. “They came back with this idea of, ‘hey, we know that a lot of students spend the winter staying in their dorm rooms and then they run to class and right back to the dorm room’ … so the idea behind this was to have an event to tell people ‘spring is here, right around the corner.’”
The event was a campus-wide collaboration with the Rec-Well directing stretching exercises, the Office of Student Involvement offering arts and crafts and the School of Education and Human Services (SEHS) offering resources.
“It is the first time we put it on, but it’s been pretty good,” Caymon Carter, undergraduate intern at the CC and event organizer, said. “Just being able to get out there to help franchise the Counseling Center so more students will know about it and just being able to help is a lot.”
In hopes of doing one mental health fair per semester at Oakview and Hillcrest Halls — to meet students where they are at — the CC saw a steady stream of students interested in the event.
“This is actually our busiest time of the year, even more than October, just because, with summer coming up, people get stressed out about having to go home, graduation, summer jobs, internships,” Schwartz said. With a waitlist of only a week, the CC offers four free therapy sessions for OU students, even after they graduate.
“For students who are graduating, it would feel really cruel to be like, ‘you’re graduated now, bye, never come back.’ No, that’s not how we work,” Schwartz said. “We give them up to a semester after their graduation to still work with their therapist. Or if they haven’t met with us, they can call us.”
Sophia Stout, counselor in training at the SEHS, explained that they also have a counseling service available for students and anyone in Michigan during the semester.
“The counselor you see is a counselor in training through the Master of Arts in counseling program here at Oakland University. So you’re part of their education,” Stout said. “It’s a learning environment. They are supervised while seeing you, but they help you and you help them, essentially.
Like Stout, Carter explained that the counseling services at OU not only provide help to students in need but also to those seeking a career in various fields.
“I know we’re going to have the opportunity, thanks to Dr. Schwartz, to speak to more graduate interns and more people in the office to see about how we want to pursue our careers if we want to go to graduate school, or what that will look like,” Carter said.
Students interested in meeting a counselor can call the OUCC at (248) 370-3465. Michigan residents can schedule a session with the SEHS counseling center at oakland.edu/counseling/sehs-cc/.
