Whether this upcoming week brings your first college finals or your last, final exam season brings stress and difficulty to students anxiously awaiting the start of winter break.

As the semester reaches its end, taking care of yourself and others should be a top priority. The Counseling Center on campus offers primarily short-term counseling and intends to “help students develop improved coping skills in order to address emotional, interpersonal, and academic concerns,” according to their website.

Counseling is accessible to students who experience academic-related stress, but it does not cover all the needs necessary to handle mental illness as a full-time student. Before seeking help, it is important to determine whether you are going through circumstantial emotional trauma or something more permanent. Mental disabilities are under reported and often invisible. Prior to taking a class based on the rhetoric of disability, I had not heard of the resources that are readily available to assist students.

The University has been a leader in providing accommodations for those with physical disabilities, but students with mental disabilities have fallen behind in accommodation. Of the mental health resources available, there has been a lack of attention to mental illness itself.

While the Counseling Center provides short-term treatment to those who are feeling depressed, there aren’t readily-available, long-term resources for someone who is going to battle depression on campus for four years. The mental health resources at University focus heavily on counseling alone and are vastly unknown by the average student.

Whether you require short-term or long-term assistance, the Counseling Center can help you determine what to do next. Bottom line—if you are unsure about what to do, give the counseling center a call.

Good luck on finals!

Jacqueline is a senior in LAS.

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