The University of Delaware Center for Counseling and Student Development (CCSD) is dedicated to the mental health and wellbeing of the student body. Our mission is to foster student learning by promoting psychological wellbeing so students can be more successful in their academic, personal and career pursuits. Essential to the Center’s mission is promoting equality and respect for individual and cultural differences. Consultation services are available to the entire University community, whether to enhance student wellbeing, to increase the understanding of student culture or to improve the ability of faculty and staff to meet student needs.

CCSD boasts a robust, accredited training program featuring master’s degree externs and doctoral and postdoctoral interns. Clinical services provided by CCSD include assessment and referral, individual and group therapy, affinity groups and single session interventions, psychiatric evaluation and medication management, urgent consultation, a variety of outreach programs to student and staff groups across campus and more.

The upheaval of the pandemic reverberated throughout the U.S. healthcare system with telehealth procedures being unveiled (and later updated) in various permutations across states. CCSD was tasked with navigating professional licensure and practice regulations for a student body spread out across numerous states, as well as internationally. These practice regulations spanned several disciplines including psychology, counseling, psychiatry and nursing. Very few CCSD policies and procedures remained untouched by the shift to telehealth–from the security of the telehealth platform and consent processes for services, to the documentation of client encounters and secure communication. CCSD quickly adopted best practices for telehealth to provide a relatively seamless continuation of emergent, urgent and routine services for and outreach to the UD student body while continuing to train a cohort of interns and externs. Distinct from, yet also related to and exacerbated by the pandemic, CCSD continues to work with students to identify and address pressing social and emotional concerns arising from the experience of racial injustice. CCSD continues to adapt and pivot with the return to campus to continue meeting its wellbeing mission throughout the pandemic and beyond.