In an effort to seek alternative mental health support for students, Student Health Services has introduced a peer listening pilot program where trained students listen and offer support to their peers in need.
Peer listeners will “support the health and wellness of the student body, reduce stigma through social support and education, and share resources,” according to the SHS application. Applications for the new program were distributed to advisors, classrooms, on the SHS Instagram, and Narwhal Nation during the Fall 2018 semester.
Created by Mica McGriggs, Staff Psychologist Coordinator for Mental Health Equity, and Vanessa McGann, an SHS Counselor, the program is run under the supervision of licensed counselors at SHS. McGriggs and McGann emphasized that the trained students are not therapists.
“We’re not training them to be therapists. What we are training them to be is a peer support group or network, people who have been trained specifically in active listening skills and active reflective responding skills,” said McGriggs. “That’s important to distinguish. Hopefully, it will be therapeutic and helpful and beneficial, but it’s not therapy.”
Peer listener programs have been sprouting up across the country, in schools like Columbia University, University of California – Berkeley, and the University of Kansas.
Harvard University also published a guide to active listening and communication with fellow students. These programs served as models for McGann and McGriggs when creating the pilot program.
“There’s a lot of evidence that students talk to students before they talk to faculty or staff. It also helps as a gateway to bring people who do need therapy into therapy because if they’re talking to them, they can sort of give them a warm handoff or referral to bring them in,” said McGann.
SHS has hired a total of six peer listeners and New School students can access their services on Monday and Thursday nights from 5 to 8:30 p.m. in the University Center. These sessions are not made by appointment but are available on a walk-in basis. Held in room 404 on Monday nights and room 304 on Thursday nights, students will have access to at least two or three listeners each night. Sessions typically last 20 to 40 minutes long but are open to going beyond or below that depending on the needs of the student.
Students have to meet specific requirements and demonstrate a level of maturity in order to be considered.
Peer listeners must be at least a junior, in good academic standing, demonstrate a level of familiarity with university and city life, and above all, have a genuine passion for listening to peers at the New School, according to the application. Applicants also had to submit two letters of recommendation from a professor or an advisor in order to be considered for an interview. Applicants weren’t required to receive work-study funding to participate in the program, but are being paid through SHS.
As part of the application process, coordinators of the program conducted in-person interviews, and candidates went under an intensive two-and-a-half days of training. The training covered a variety of clinical topics; discussing ethical guidelines and confidentiality. The training also included role-playing scenarios to practice active-listening skills and asking open-ended questions, and as well as validating the concerns of peers.
McGann, a suicide prevention specialist, assisted in a suicide risk assessment training in case of severe situations, which, she said, “normalized” asking someone if they were feeling suicidal. ”That’s a really important thing to know how to do and to be able to know what to do if someone says yes, and get them the help that they need,” she said.
“This is a confidential space and we want to make sure that people know that so that people can feel safe to talk about [their concerns]. But also we need to know when to get SHS involved because we are still students. We’re not therapists,” said Adrian Lajara, a third-year Literary Studies major, who will serve as a peer listener. “That’s one of the things that we wanted to make really clear with this program. How do we provide this help without overstepping boundaries?”
“We’re not here to give advice necessarily. We’re also not trained professionals in psychology. It’s kind of being able to support and validate people’s experiences and that’s something that you learned how to do in the training,” said Natasha Magallon, a fourth-year Literary Studies major, who will also be a peer listener.
Candidates were not chosen for the position until after they underwent the training. This was a conscious decision made in case candidates opted out of the program due to the severity of the issues they might encounter on the job. Counselors wanted to make sure there was a batch of peer listeners fit for the roles required of them. Peer listeners will continue to develop their active listening skills through one-hour supervision from a counselor every week.
Since the “peer listener” is distinct from a licensed counselor, the stakes are even higher for confidentiality. McGriggs and McGrann stressed in their training that although these students aren’t licensed professionals, they would be held to the same standards and ethical guidelines as if they were.
“[Confidentiality] is our most important ethical value which ties into the roots of ethics in psychology is the beneficence in non-maleficence, which means only do good, do no harm. That’s really important,” said McGriggs.“I think we’ve spent a lot of time trying to sell that philosophically to them so that they can really feel empowered to be able to embody that value.”
There are a couple of instances for peer listeners breaking confidentiality. If the peer expresses signs of suicidal or homicidal tendencies, or abuse being inflicted upon them or a known individual, peer listeners must address this issue with SHS counselors.
In all cases, McGriggs and McGann repeated that if a breach of confidentiality was made, the consequences for the peer listener would be determined on a case-by-case basis.
“At the end of the day, that’s our value. That if you’re going to do this work, you can’t cause harm. If that were to happen, they’d be dismissed from the program,” said McGriggs.
Peer listeners also spoke to why they chose to participate in this pilot program and discussed their objectives in assisting their peers in their one-on-one sessions.
“I know that therapy costs money and The New School is great but they only give you eight free counseling sessions, and also not everyone wants to go straight to counseling or anything,” said Lajara. “This is a space where they can talk to other students and just vent, get resources, or get help without having to take the time out of their busy schedules to go to regular therapy,” said Lajara.
This pilot program comes a year after SHS faced budget cuts this academic year for access to medical services. In the 2018-2019 term, students only have access to eight counseling sessions, instead of the 12 counseling sessions that were offered the previous academic year. In the previous academic year, Student Health Services encountered a growing demand for these resources, but due to long waiting lists and insufficient staffing, these resources were inaccessible to many students.
“I thought it would be great to have some tools instead of just me making it up myself in terms of active listening and trying to understand. Also being able to actually help people [get] to the right resources. I thought this would be a great way to do it,” said Caroline Garcia, a graduate student seeking an MFA in Fine Arts, who will serve as a peer listener.
Garcia said she feels isolated in the MFA program and TNS community and hoped this program would bridge that gap. “I have no classes in the UC. I hardly ever come here. And we’re literally just around the corner and I’m not from here. I just thought it’d be a really good opportunity to meet people but also get a better understanding of how our community actually functions,” she said.
The success of this pilot program will be measured by anonymous feedback forms provided to students who meet with peer listeners, along with peer listeners being asked how effective they viewed the program to be.
“I think that until every student on a university campus has the same access to support, to resources, to achievement, and health as every other student, there’s work to be done,” said McGriggs. “And if we want to make our university, or any other university, a wellness campus, a campus that is looking at education holistically, then this piece of it is very, very key to those ends. That’s my goal and I’ll do my little part where I can.”
Rebekah Stewartson contributed reporting