CHAMPAIGN – A new clinic in Champaign offers community members free counseling and treatment provided by graduate students at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign.
The healing, training and research clinic is staffed by graduate students enrolled in a two-year mental health counseling master’s program.
The clinic is offering appointments this semester through May 6, with weekly therapy sessions lasting 50 minutes, according to Lydia Khoury, a licensed clinical psychologist and associate professor of counseling psychology at the U of I.
While not every mental health problem can be solved in six to 15 short sessions, Khoury said the experience can still be valuable.
“You start to experience what it’s like to actually have someone sit down with you, pay attention to you, really try to understand you and then try to work together with you to solve those problems,” she said.
Khoury said he directs training for graduate students and oversees the counseling process. She co-founded the clinic with one of her colleagues, Lisa Kinderman.
Khoury said the goal of the clinic is to provide students with opportunities for hands-on experience. Initially, she said the clinic planned to offer its counseling services to U of I students, but ultimately decided to change its clientele.
“My colleagues who work with students said there are great services for students on our campus,” Khoury said. “It made sense to me, so I was able to work with the community and the light bulb went off.”
She said she has lived in the area for about 30 years and has noticed a shortage of counseling services.
“This is an opportunity to serve community members who want to try counseling, [or] May want access to counselling, but otherwise cannot access services, be it financial or for other reasons,” Khoury said.
Students who work as doctors are trained professionally, such as how to practice legally and ethically, Khoury said.
Kaya Edwards, a first-year master’s student in the mental health counseling program, said while students can learn more from textbooks, clinical experience is invaluable.
“When you meet someone right next to you, their situation is very complicated,” she said. “I think it takes more time than being like, ‘This is theory and I’m going to apply it,’ and it’s more about exploration.”
Edwards also said it’s important to be available to customers who are looking for help.
The sessions are recorded so that the students can get feedback from the teachers about their counselling.
Edwards said the supervision helps her develop her identity as a counselor.
“I’m getting real life experience and I’m doing it with everyone backing me up,” she said. “When I start here, it’s not nerve-wracking, if I make a mistake or if I do well, there will always be someone. [cheer] I on
Students are supervised by licensed clinical psychologists who understand clinical practices, laws, ethics and the complexities of Indigenous peoples, Khoury said.
When students make mistakes, Khoury said, the important thing is to learn from them, correct them, and improve the remedial approach.
Correcting errors in therapy is not the same as correcting math errors, she said.
“If I make a mistake like two plus two equals five and correct it to four – it’s very simple,” she said.
For example, if a student speaks too quickly, Khoury said, they can work on slowing down a bit in the next session.
“Or I forgot to ask that question. Let me make sure I come back and ask it at the next meeting,” Khoury said. “So the perception of mistakes in this kind of work is different than things that are somewhat black and white.”
She said the problems addressed in the healing, training and research clinic can be interpersonal, such as conflicts with partners, or individual, such as self-esteem issues or anxiety about dealing with a crisis.
But the clinic does not offer crisis intervention — meaning that if someone is suicidal, suicidal, experiencing mental illness or in need of other emergency mental health services, they are encouraged to seek help through Rosecrance’s 24-hour crisis line, which is integrated with the national 988 suicide and crisis lifeline.
Anyone over the age of 18 can fill out a short survey to express their interest in speaking with a therapist, Khoury said.
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