Drake University has been experiencing steady high demand for mental health support from its counseling center in Broadlawns Community Clinic. 

Kayla Bell-Consolver, the counseling director at Broadlawns, says that demand nationwide has spiked since 2017, and has especially increased since the pandemic. The counseling center also sees demand change throughout the school year, with demand peaking during high-stress periods like midterms and finals.

“Our intake structure is streamlined so that we can get caught up really quickly, and that helps us be available to students,” said Emma Caster, one of the therapists at Broadlawns. “That’s something that I really enjoy as a counselor here, is just the way that the approach is structured here that makes us really well suited to respond to that demand.” 

As a way to help manage high student demand for counseling and to provide opportunities to student interns, the counseling center interns provide weekly therapy to students while fulfilling the requirements of their master’s degree programs. 

“We realized we have seen a growing number of students that have had pre-existing mental health support, that need weekly therapy, and we wanted students to have the opportunity to meet with someone on a more consistent basis,” said Bell-Consolver. 

Those more frequent sessions help student interns gain experience and skills while working with a flexible schedule. 

“What I really like about the internship experience is that you have the opportunity during the slower periods to expand your skills,” said Amari Love, one of the student interns working at Broadlawns. “If you’re not doing a session and getting the experiential opportunity there, you’re thinking about different ways you could do programming. You get really creative to find how, as a therapist, you can be a little bit more multidimensional versus just being one-on-one, because then you can cater to students in a number of ways.”

Broadlawns is also looking to push mental health support outside of the office and therapy space through programming as a way of being proactive about addressing mental health challenges. By creating a culture of mental health support around campus, the counseling center hopes to distribute resources and support before the need for them arises.

“It doesn’t matter how many counselors we have,” said Bell-Consovler. “The more people we have, there’s more people that are going to come and get the support. So I realized that we have to do something differently.”

Bell-Consolver explained that therapists routinely check in, work through stressors and provide coping skills to students to use outside of counseling sessions as ways to extend mental health support beyond the immediate therapy session. 

“All of us, including me, would love to see students weekly, truly. So when [high student demand] impacts the care that we have, a lot of it is really honing in on what can we do that would be the most supportive for students,” Bell-Consolver said. 

But Bell-Consolver also attributes the high demand for mental health support to larger issues that can’t be addressed just through the counseling center.

“Mental health is a systemic issue. People are coming to us with concerns that are happening in so many different areas of their lives, so that’s when we really try to diversify,” Bell-Consolver said.

As part of that initiative, Caster and another therapist, Tyler Jacobs-Lewis, are working together to create digital content offering mental health resources and support. 

Broadlawns also connects with other organizations. For example, for Eating Disorder Awareness Week, which is Feb. 24 to Mar. 2, Broadlawns worked with Edison Eating Disorders and Mental Health Services. And on Feb. 26, Broadlawns coordinated with the National Alliance on Mental Illness On Campus at Drake University and NAMI Iowa for a poetry and writing workshop. 

Bell-Consovler also expressed her receptiveness to student feedback and collaborative spaces to improve. 

“Are there more things that students are wanting that haven’t been suggested yet or feel completely out of the realm of possibility? Because that’s where I like to live, is the realm of outside possibility. Because we can make those things possible. We just have to create a plan to get there,” Bell-Consolver said. “Ideally, my goal is a mental health forum where we can come together and talk and see, ‘what’s the vision?’”