In a community already suffering a severe mental health care crisis, OU students and Norman residents may face the loss of one of the community’s most affordable mental health resources.
OU’s Counseling Psychology Clinic, a student-run center that serves as a practicum for counseling psychology doctoral students, is facing possible closure after a July 2017 decision that the clinic will no longer accept doctoral students.
The clinic serves both OU and Norman and receives many overflow patients from OU’s University Counseling Center, where students can wait weeks or even months for care, said Erika Warbinton, third-year doctoral student in the psychology practicum program and senior clinic supervisor. Each month, the clinic sees around 180 to 200 clients, clinic director Lisa Frey estimated.
The counseling psychology program will continue through May 2018, Frey said, but the fact that no new students are entering the program means the clinic’s future is dire.
“It’ll close,” Frey said. “We have to have students to staff it — the students are the counselors. When I step down as clinic director … there will be a clinic director, but at some point … there won’t be counselors to see clients.”
Aside from servicing diverse clients from across Oklahoma, the facility offers an affordable sliding fee scale, which means some clients can pay $15 or less for services, and some clients can receive pro bono sessions, Frey said. Oklahoma ranks 48th nationally for residents reporting “poor mental health days” and for overall health and is 46th in the nation for per-capita state-sponsored funding for behavioral health care, according to the Oklahoma Department of Mental Health and Substance Abuse Services.
While the clinic had three supervising faculty members at the beginning of the summer, Frey said she will retire in December 2017 with OU’s Special Incentivized Retirement Program. One of the two other faculty members resigned at summer’s start, and the third was a new hire who ultimately decided not to come on board with the program, she said.
“It seemed to me that it happened pretty quickly, as we had taken a new class that was going to start in the fall and hired somebody new,” Frey said.
The sudden faculty issue coincides with an upcoming visit from the American Psychological Association, which will determine whether the counseling psychology program can stay accredited, said Gregg Garn, dean of OU’s Jeannine Rainbolt College of Education, which houses the program.
While Garn said the clinic has hired two interim faculty members to serve the program for now, the APA recommends such psychology programs employ at least four faculty members, and the accreditation visit comes Aug. 30. Thus, the College of Education made the decision to close the program to students, focus on educating the classes already in the program and work with the APA to find a long-term solution, Garn said.
“I think, going forward, we’re basically just going to need to take it semester by semester, or year by year, if you will, to figure out exactly what the conditions are,” Garn said. “But the ability to meet that requirement from the accreditation body – we don’t have the ability to do that in the short term, so that’s why we made the decision to really focus on the students in the program, and then that will give us more time to be able to look long-term, see what direction to go.”
Warbinton and Kim Stewart, a first-year student in the program, said the reasoning behind the program’s shutdown has still not been made clear to those in the program.
“It was incredibly shocking to all of us,” Stewart said. “I and other students found out via an email this summer.”
Stewart’s education at OU is part of a four-year program, so the university has promised to graduate the students in the psychology program even without the clinic’s presence, she said. Now, the question is whether or not those students will receive the level of training they signed up for, she said.
“For those of us who are just beginning the program who are looking at four years with no designated faculty, when the university’s already pulled the plug, we’re trying to determine if we’re going to be able to be trained at the competencies that were advertised to us by the university,” Stewart said.
The biggest blow comes not to the students, but to the Norman community, Frey said.
“(It’s) a real loss to the students and to the community too, because as you know, here we are, we’re in an area that needs that advocacy for people with mental health issues as well as people who have diverse identities,” Frey said. “We serve a wide diversity of clients in terms of not just mental health issues, but in terms of personal identities: gender, race, ethnicity, sexuality.”
The clinic did receive new doctoral students in February 2017, but that class will be its last, Warbinton said. Of the six original students, four have left the class, said Stewart, one of the two students remaining in this newest and last class.
OU’s counseling psychology program currently has 16 students enrolled, and the clinic employs three students as work-study staffers and six students as clinicians who see patients, Warbinton said in an email.
Stewart came to OU from Minnesota because OU’s psychology training program is one of only two in the country that trains future psychologists with a social justice advocacy focus, she said.
“That’s really what drew me here, partially because I think there’s always a need for more providers, more psychologists, more mental health, but also those who are trained to advocate for the underserved and to advocate for the field,” Stewart said. “That was something this program has worked really hard to do, and I think that it will have an impact on me personally, but through my career, my hope is to make an impact on the broader level, and I think all students would agree with that.”
Garn said ultimately, he is uncertain about the program and the clinic’s future beyond this academic year.
“I think we are committed to making sure that the clinic is open for the next year, and I think what we’re going to have to do is reevaluate at that time. It really is kind of year-by-year, so I’m not able to give a long-term commitment that this or that is going to happen,” Garn said. “I think our best ability as leaders is to, at this point in time, is to take into consideration the conditions, the data, and then make the best decision possible, so if you asked me to look far ahead, I just can’t do that.”
However large the barriers the Counseling Psychology Clinic currently faces, Frey, Stewart and Warbinton all encouraged members of the community to continue seeking help from the clinic.
“Now we’re fully functional, we’re fully staffed for the time being, and we want to serve people, especially people who can’t get services elsewhere,” Warbinton said. “I think for the time being, absolutely continue to come to us.”
