Types of Services
The BCC offers a short-term stabilization model, and supports students on campus through short-term individual therapy, group therapy and community therapy. When students are interested in longer term, exploratory individual therapy, we offer referrals to off-campus resources. When needed, a BCC care manager can help find appropriate referrals off campus. We also offer BCC psychiatry consultation, when needed, for students already established at the BCC for individual therapy. All services delivered at the BCC will be billed to insurance with no out-of-pocket expense for students. Community therapy services will not be billed to insurance.
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The first visit is called an assessment. You will meet with a counselor who, together with your input will help to determine the best treatment recommendations for you. This plan is tailored specifically to your unique needs.
The BCC focuses on stabilization and short-term individual therapy. Individual therapy appointments are generally 30 or 45 minutes. Therapists will help you with symptom reduction, as well as life skills and coping skills.
Group therapy increases a sense of social integration, a student’s sense of belonging, a sense of “mattering” to others on campus and allows for the establishment of skills to create meaningful social relationships. The more someone has a sense of belonging, the less stressed and depressed they may be. A sense of belonging has also been shown to increase student retention and positive mental health.
Finally, the more one feels they matter to others, that others rely on them and are concerned about them, the more successful they will be. This is especially true of immigrant and first-generation students and these students are also more likely to rely on peers for support than staff or faculty (Stebleton, Soria, and Huesman, 2011).
Students looking for longer term care or specialty care are able to work with our case manager, Vanessa Mena-Gibson, MSW, LCSW. She will facilitate referrals to community therapists, partial hospital programs, and specialty care.
Urgent Care Counseling hours are from 11 a.m. to Noon and 3 to 4 p.m. Monday-Friday. Urgent appointments are for students who have an immediate concern or emergency that can not wait for a regularly scheduled appointment. For an emergency after business hours, call 781-736-3730 and select option 2 to speak with a clinician. We do not offer walk in psychiatry consultations .
Driven by the counseling center’s mission and inspired by Brandeis’ value of community transformation, BCC Community therapists provide free, confidential mental health services at several locations around campus. Community Therapists can offer strategies to strengthen life and coping skills, insight and support, as well as information and connection to additional resources.
Services include:
Students who are engaged in individual therapy at the BCC are eligible for BCC psychiatry consultation. After consideration by a student and their therapist, a request for consultation is initiated by the individual therapist. Psychiatry consultation involves discussion of potential diagnoses, and collaborative consideration of treatment options, which may include medication. The student’s BCC individual therapist and psychiatrist then continue to work as a team with the student. In concert with the short-term model, when students have stabilized, their individual therapist serves as a care manager to ensure a smooth transition of care from the BCC to providers off-campus.
If a student is already seeing an individual therapist off-campus, or if they are not in need of both individual therapy and psychiatry, our care manager can help facilitate a referral to a psychiatrist off-campus.
