{"id":23957,"date":"2015-09-10T09:51:52","date_gmt":"2015-09-10T13:51:52","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.bumc.bu.edu\/busm\/?p=23957"},"modified":"2015-09-10T09:51:52","modified_gmt":"2015-09-10T13:51:52","slug":"mental-health-clinic-for-students-opens-on-medical-campus","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.bumc.bu.edu\/camed\/2015\/09\/10\/mental-health-clinic-for-students-opens-on-medical-campus\/","title":{"rendered":"Mental Health Clinic for Students Opens on Medical Campus"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Twice-a-week Behavioral Medicine services<\/h4>\n<\/div>\n
\n
\"The<\/p>\n

A new Medical Campus mental health clinic, housed at the Soloman Carter Fuller Building, opened earlier this month and will be staffed on Mondays and Wednesdays by SHS Behavioral Health clinicians. Photo by Jackie Ricciardi<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

Some years ago, a School of Public Health survey reported that half of Medical Campus students had sought mental health care of some sort. That doesn\u2019t surprise Kate Goodmon Nudel.<\/p>\n

\u201cGraduate students are under immense pressure and stress in school,\u201d says Nudel (MED\u201916), \u201cbut also as adults. Many of us are married or have children or are planning to do that soon, while we are in school.\u201d But until now, Medical Campus students needing to see Student Health Services Behavioral Medicine<\/a>\u00a0staff had to make their way to the Charles River Campus (CRC). Last week, Behavioral Medicine opened a satellite clinic on the Medical Campus exclusively for students, to run twice a week: Mondays, from 9 a.m. to 6 p.m., and Wednesdays, from 9 to 5. Two clinicians will staff the two offices and waiting room.<\/p>\n

The clinic is on the eighth floor of the Solomon Carter Fuller Mental Health Center at 85 East Newton St., which is named for BU grad Fuller<\/a>\u00a0(MED 1897), the first black psychiatrist in the United States, who taught at BU and retired as a professor emeritus. The state-owned site was chosen with special care. While close to all the Medical Campus schools, it provides privacy from other BU student and clinical services, so \u201cstudents won\u2019t have to worry about bumping into a staff or faculty member from their program,\u201d says Carrie Landa, director of Behavioral Medicine.<\/p>\n

Besides SPH, the Medical Campus houses the School of Medicine and the Henry M. Goldman School of Dental Medicine. Students there who have wanted to use the CRC Behavioral Medicine services couldn\u2019t always manage it \u201cbecause of long days and nights in the hospital and the additional time getting back and forth to the CRC,\u201d says Karen Antman, dean of MED and provost of the Medical Campus.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis is an effort we have been pushing for many years, and we are delighted to see it come to fruition,\u201d adds Linda Hyman, associate provost for MED\u2019s Division of Graduate Medical Sciences.<\/p>\n

Landa says that the clinic will provide \u201cevaluation and brief treatment for students,\u201d similar to what their counterparts receive on the CRC. \u201cWhen longer-term treatment is indicated, we work with the student to provide a referral to a provider in the community, based on their insurance.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cI am thrilled that all of our hard work has been recognized and our voices heard,\u201d says Nudel. She was on the board of the Graduate and Professional Leadership Council<\/a>, a student liaison group with the University\u2019s administration, which formed a committee in spring 2014 to advocate for the clinic. The committee initially wanted a general health clinic; when that proved too ambitious, the members surveyed Medical Campus students for their priorities.<\/p>\n

With more than 400 respondents, \u201cwe found students wanted a behavioral health clinic\u201d most, says Nudel. Angela Jackson, MED associate dean of student affairs, says the interest at her school arises from \u201cthe stress and demands of medical school\u2014long hours, heavy study schedule, high-stakes exams, not to mention seeing tragedy, death, and suffering on a daily basis.\u201d<\/p>\n

Jackson adds that \u201chaving access to care on site will make an enormous difference to the students and provide another accessible option for mental health care.\u2026I suspect the interest will be huge, and very quickly we will need to expand the clinic\u2019s hours.\u201d<\/p>\n

Indeed, Nudel says, the student group\u2019s health survey found that 65 percent of respondents said they\u2019d avail themselves of on-campus mental health services, leading her to predict that the new clinic \u201cwill be pretty busy.\u201d<\/p>\n

This BU Today<\/em> story was written by Rich Barlow<\/a>.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A new Medical Campus mental health clinic, housed at the Soloman Carter Fuller Building, opened in September and will be staffed on Mondays and Wednesdays by SHS Behavioral Health clinicians.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":903,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[127,91],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bumc.bu.edu\/camed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23957"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bumc.bu.edu\/camed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bumc.bu.edu\/camed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bumc.bu.edu\/camed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/903"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bumc.bu.edu\/camed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=23957"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.bumc.bu.edu\/camed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23957\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":23958,"href":"https:\/\/www.bumc.bu.edu\/camed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23957\/revisions\/23958"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bumc.bu.edu\/camed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=23957"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bumc.bu.edu\/camed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=23957"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bumc.bu.edu\/camed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=23957"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}