The OU Counseling Psychology Clinic, which has helped serve the Norman community for over 50 years, will close at the end of the day May 10 after months in limbo due to a faculty shortage.
The clinic is a student-run center that serves as a practicum for OU’s counseling psychology doctoral students and offers an affordable sliding fee scale, meaning some clients can pay $15 or less for services, and some clients can receive pro bono sessions.
The clinic, which has helped around 10,000 clients and trained 1,200 students since it opened in 1966, has been struggling with administrative staffing since three supervising faculty members retired and resigned in 2017, according to a letter from clinic director Terry Pace. The faculty positions were not refilled, leaving students in the program waiting for a solution.
“It just so happened that the three faculty that run the Ph.D. program in counseling psychology, which works through the clinic, all left in the summer,” Pace said in an interview. “Those lines were not approved to be refilled, along with about 9 or 10 other lines from the department of educational psychology, which we are under.”
After the clinic closes, Pace said the doctoral students in the program will be placed in various community programs to receive their training. Clinic staff members have been working individually with clients to find a place for them to receive further treatment after the closure, Pace said.
“Historically, when Goddard (Health Center) gets really full, we have been that overflow for them,” Pace said. “So that is definitely going to have an impact on access for students.”
Scott Miller, director of Goddard’s University Counseling Center, said in an email that “because the University Counseling Center is the designated provider of mental health services for students, faculty, and staff, the Counseling Psychology Clinic will not have any impact on OU student access to mental health services.”
Students like Brittany Riggin, a second-year counseling psychology student in the program, are also concerned about their own futures and the experiences they will miss without practice through the program.
“It is going to impact everyone differently because we are all at different stages in the program,” Riggin said. “For the students who are first-years, they will have only gotten one year of experience in the training clinic. In some ways, they are missing out on that experience, as far as being able to be there with students every day.”
The biggest worry for students working at the clinic is the clients they see and where they will receive services after the clinic closes, said Riggin, who echoed Pace’s concern about overcrowding at Goddard’s University Counseling Center.
“Historically, we have received the overflow from Goddard because we are more able to see students on a weekly basis,” Riggin said. “I would imagine it is going to make things busier for Goddard, and make things even more difficult for students who are looking for services to be able to be seen. It is definitely removing a really big resource for not only the campus but Norman in general.”
The clinic sees clients that are students, as well as patients from around the Norman community and much of central Oklahoma, according to Pace’s letter.
“One of the good things about the training clinic is we can see people without insurance, and we can see them for a really low cost,” Riggin said. “That is going to be the biggest struggle, is finding places for those clients to go for that amount of money if they do not have insurance.”
