Crisis Intervention

The Walk-In Clinic functions as the Counseling Center’s primary access point for consultation and crisis intervention. Students who present with an urgent need to see a counselor will be routed through our walk-in clinic. Crisis intervention services are designed to assist students who are confronting life-threatening circumstances, current or recent traumatic experiences, serious mental illness, and concerns about the safety of self or others.

Crisis services are not intended for ongoing, intense treatment for severe, chronic, or long-term mental illness or mental health problems, but rather to help keep students safe, stabilize, and plan for further treatment at the SHSU Counseling Center or with another external treatment provider.

Crisis situations include, but are not limited to the following:

• Students who are suicidal and/or making overt references to suicide
• Students who are unable to provide basic levels of care for him or herself
• Students who are so profoundly depressed that assessment for hospitalization should be considered
• Students who are unable to resolve a crisis and experiencing severe anxiety.

What Crisis Intervention is NOT

• Therapy
• Substitute for therapy contact with a student's regular counselor
• An opportunity for venting frustration or other forms of intense affect, in the absence of lethality or a real crisis (e.g. suicidal thoughts, thoughts of harming others, recent or anticipated assault or abuse toward self or someone else, hallucinations, recent death of a loved one, etc.)
• An avenue for a student to access a counselor other than his/her assigned counselor
• A check-in between therapy sessions with a student’s regular counselor – if a student truly needs more frequent contact, this should be arranged within the therapy relationship/process