It is easy to believe that the free counseling services provided by UTSA has only been around for three years. There are components to the Wellness 360 aspect of it that are not necessarily as reliable as UTSA makes it seem. Although there is online availability and accessibility to their counseling, which is readily available at any given moment, their in-person counseling needs more work.
The Wellness 360 clinic does take walk-in appointments for those in a crisis. Their questions are anxiety-inducing at first with a direct focus on how serious the walk-in appointment is. This can lead to frustration with an individual being bombarded with the questions being asked. All they want is help but, of course, the questions are required to be answered with the onboarding process. They only allow six free sessions after the walk-in appointment if the individual is enrolled as a UTSA student that semester. If they are not, they have to pay a $25 fee for the six sessions provided for that semester.
The rigorous questions asked at first lead to an overwhelming sense of “Is it all worth it?” Bombarding a college student about why they are there and what they need help with could trigger a fight or flight response when the courage to seek counseling is such a tough decision to make in the first place.
This then leads to the availability of only six sessions per semester, which is flat-out ridiculous. What can a person accomplish with only six meetings with their therapist? If the symptoms and struggles the individual is dealing with are chronic, then 14 sessions should be offered to them and to the students at UTSA.
Meetings with a lack of consistency only result in more anxiety. What is needed for college students is stability and reassurance that the collective of the student body is being taken care of by the university. Of course, any amount of therapy helps a lot with the reassurance of one’s mental health, but more therapy sessions should be put into motion for students. Although UTSA’s free counseling services are still a work in progress, their availability and accessibility show that UTSA is on the right path for a better future for their student’s well-being.
