Counseling Center

We would like to take a moment to thank our colleagues from around the University for all of your collaboration in helping to provide such a caring network of support for our undergraduate and graduate students. The fact that so many of you take the time to talk with students, offer support, and connect them to the Counseling Center when needed, goes a long way in making sure that our students are academically and psychologically successful.

The Counseling Center staff continues to offer high-quality therapeutic services, while managing high demand, heightened symptom severity, and escalating crisis levels amongst students. In addition, staff remains committed to culturally informed care and growing in our own cultural awareness. Throughout the year, the Center offered a range of counseling services to meet the mental health needs of both undergraduate and graduate students, including an array of group and workshop offerings, short-term psychotherapy services, daytime and after-hours emergency services, and comprehensive referral assistance.

This year, CLINICAL DEMAND continued near all-time highs including 3,434 total sessions, 712 students seeking counseling services, 613 single session Let's Talks and Triages, 390 group therapy contacts, and 387 consultations provided to other concerned individuals. This continues a significant trend and is predictive of continuing increases in demand for our services.

The number of CRISES (n= 192) among students requiring Counseling Center assistance maintained at record high levels. A significant portion of these crises required assessment at area hospitals. In additional to suicidality, the primary causes of concern were severe anxiety, severe depression, bipolar disorder, psychotic symptoms, and trauma, including sexual assault.

42% of graduates of the class of 2025 (43% of those who graduated with honors) came to the Counseling Center for counseling at some point during their Loyola careers. These usage data are significantly higher than data reported by similarly sized institutions.

• Retention: Data from a post-treatment survey showed that being in counseling directly contributed to the retention of students.

• Academic Success: Survey data also showed that being in counseling directly contributed to the academic success of 88% students.

• Belonging: To help keep the Loyola community and our partners updated on our full range of services and resources available through the Counseling Center, as well as to provide intervention for all students in the campus community, we have taken on more outreach events, become a more consistent presence on social media, and further utilized our public health messaging.

Public health campaigns have promoted awareness of today’s college student issues and the benefits of counseling. These efforts have been making the Center more visible and approachable to students. This year, the Counseling Center developed and implemented a year-long Public Health campaign titled “Therapy 101: It’s Work and It’s Worth It.”

• The campaign included programming in the form of printed and digital posters, website content, video interviews featuring various Counseling Center staff, and regular social media posts.
• An all-time high of 6,478 student contacts occurred in over 175 outreach programs with a particular focus on first year students and student athletes.

We successfully expanded our training program to include a counseling intern for the 2024-2025 academic year. We hosted four trainees in the Fall semester from Loyola University Maryland (PsyD), Howard University (PhD), and John Hopkins University (MS). Additionally, we added an MSW intern from Louisiana State University for the Spring 2025 semester.

Counseling Center staff and the members of the Social Justice Committee have worked continuously throughout the 2024-2025 academic year to address a wide range of needs. The committee met biweekly throughout the academic year and continues to serve the role of the “think tank” for issues of inclusion and equity impacting mental health on our campus. This year, we expanded our focus on anti-oppression and liberatory wellness by partnering with the Inclusive Therapists Network for trainings that root wellness in liberation.

We also helped to create several new social justice initiatives across campus:

• Empower Podcast: A partnership with the Thrive Center that provided a platform for candid conversations with administrators about empowerment at the intersections of mental health, culture, and identity.
• Cura Conversations Series: Served on an interdepartmental working group to implement this dialogue series to provide a space to address critical topics through compassion, curiosity, and care.
• UNIDA Program: Working with the Office of Equity and Inclusion to host a UNIDA program in the Fall and Spring semesters for all students that engaged students in activities that explored identity and created a sense of belonging.

Check out our website and Instagram page, where we continue to use social media to raise awareness and celebrate a variety of identity and cultural events and topics through a wellness and mental health advocacy lens.

The MHTF consists of professionals from across campus and undergraduate and graduate student representatives. Members work collaboratively to connect faculty, administrators, and staff with useful resources and information on mental health, advocate on issues related to diversity, equity, and inclusion, and complete projects benefiting campus-wide public health.

This year's accomplishments included:

• Partnered with Human Resources to make Vector mental health trainings mandatory in new employee onboarding
• Increased MHTF branding through distribution of GBB stickers as visible community identifiers and initiated discussions on GBB pin designs
• Maintained a quarterly GBB newsletter with readership rate of 50% or higher
• Rebranded monthly 'SAFE-ty Notices' to Healthy Hounds Monthly (HHM) and expanded visibility through Messina classrooms, digital signage, and printed copies
• Planned strategic marketing initiatives including a press kit, Loyola Today posts, and email signatures
• Developed a framework for an organizational chart to connect MHTF with broader wellness efforts

Students are referred to the Center from a variety of sources. As in prior years, students often sought counseling at the suggestion of a friend, highlighting the importance of our strategic outreach to all students.

Making a Referral:

• Be caring, firm, and straight forward in your recommendations
• Have the student call or come in to make an appointment: Humanities 150, 410-617-2273
• Call or walk the student over yourself, if an emergency
• Remind the student that services are FREE AND CONFIDENTIAL

Students who came to the Center mirror our overall enrollment. Important to our mission of ensuring the accessibility of service to all students, 52% of students who came to the Center self-identified as being in the BIPOC community and 18% identified as first-generation to attend college. We served 94 students who self-identified as being in the LGBTQ+ community.

A great deal of research shows group counseling to be a very effective form of treatment for many of the challenges experienced by college students. The growth of our group counseling program has been an effective means of dealing with increased clinical demand. Students continue to report overwhelmingly positive feedback about their experiences in groups.

We collect data from students who use our services, which helps us to continuously enhance our services and ensure we are meeting the changing needs of Loyola students.

Post-treatment survey data demonstrated that being in counseling helped an overwhelming majority of students improve their emotional health, become more effective in their relationships with others, and increased their understanding of themselves and their motivations.

The Counseling Center is accredited by the International Association of Counseling Services (IACS).

Website: https://www.loyola.edu/department/counseling-center
Location: Humanities, Room 150 One flight up the turret entrance
Phone: (410) 617-2273