CHAMPAIGN — A new clinic in Champaign offers free counseling and therapy for community members provided by graduate students at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign.
The Healing, Training and Research clinic is staffed by graduate students enrolled in the 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 Khuri, licensed clinical psychologist and clinical professor of counseling psychology at the U of I.
While not every mental health issue can be solved in six to 15 short sessions, Khuri said the experience can still be valuable.
“You start to have an experience of what it’s like to have someone actually sit down with you, pay attention to you, really try to understand you and then try to work collaboratively with you to address whatever these issues are,” she said.
Khuri said she directs the training for graduate students and supervises the counseling process. She co-founded the clinic with her U of I colleague Lisa Kinderman.
Khuri said the clinic aims 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 shift its clientele.
“My colleagues who work with students said, ‘There’s a lot of good services on our campus for students,’” Khuri said. “That made sense to me, so being able to pivot and work with the community… the light bulb went off.”
She said she’s lived in the area for almost 30 years and has noticed a shortage of counseling services.
“This is an opportunity to serve members in the community who might want to try counseling, [or] might want access to counseling, but otherwise couldn’t access services, whether financially or for other reasons,” Khuri said.
Khuri said the students working as clinicians are trained in professionalism, such as how to practice legally and ethically.
Kaiya Edwards, a first-year Master’s student in the mental health counseling program, said while students can learn a lot from textbooks, clinical experience is invaluable.
“When you’re meeting somebody right across from you, their situations are a lot more complicated,” she said. “I think it takes a lot more time than just being like, ‘This is the theory and I’m going to apply it,’ and it’s a lot more about exploration.”
Edwards also said it is important to be there for the clients who are seeking help.
The sessions are recorded so that students can receive feedback from instructors on their counseling.
Edwards said the supervision helps her cultivate her own identity as a counselor.
“I’m getting real-life experience and I’m doing it with backup of everybody here to support me,” she said. “When I’m starting here, it’s not as nerve-wracking. If I make a mistake or if I’m doing great, there’s always going to be somebody there to [cheer] me on.”
Khuri said the students are supervised by licensed clinical psychologists who understand clinical practices, laws, ethics and the complexities of real people.
When students make mistakes, Khuri said the important thing is to learn from them, correct them and improve the way they provide therapy.
She said correcting mistakes in therapy isn’t like fixing a math error.
“If I made a mistake like, two plus two equals five and corrected it to four —that’s too simplistic,” she said.
For example, if a student was too rushed in speaking, Khuri said, in the next session they can work on slowing down a bit.
“Or I forgot to ask this question. Let me make sure I come back and ask it in the next session,” Khuri said. “So the idea of mistakes is different in this kind of work than in stuff that’s a little bit more 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 the anxiety of dealing with a crisis.
But the clinic does not offer crisis intervention — meaning if someone is suicidal, homicidal, experiencing psychosis or requiring 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 & Crisis Lifeline.
Khuri said anyone 18 and over can fill out a short survey to express their interest in talking with a therapist.