Faced with understaffing issues, UHS has announced a restructuring plan for its Mental Health Services. The department plans to cut traditional services, such as individual counseling, and instead direct students to its newly implemented “Do-It-Yourself” treatment method, centered around complimentary face masks, scented candles, and ice cream.
UHS’s understaffing is due in part to its poor employee retention rate. A former UHS counselor explained that he left his job because “he found listening to sad students all day to be, like, sort of a bummer.”
UHS’s newly appointed director is leading the charge towards the department’s reformation.
“The first thing I did was hang a sign above the door that says ‘Good Vibes Only.’ When a student starts going off on some depressing shit, I just point at the sign,” the director said, confidently assuring the face masks and candles were only the beginning.
“I’m trying to secure funding from the university to allow us to subsidize Netflix accounts for those students who need a little more motivation to spend more time in their room and less in my office,” the director said.
However, she also confessed that she’s “not trying to go so far that [she] puts [herself] out of a job.”
“If these students were to find out about the powers of herbal tea or a bubble bath… it’s over for me,” the director said.
Adjustments have also been made to UHS’s 24 Hour Emergency Hotline.
“We realized it was equally effective if we replaced the current phone operators with a robot programmed to respond to statements of distress with, ‘It really do be like that sometimes,’” the director told me.
An anonymous patient spoke highly of UHS’s new approach to mental health.
“I can’t believe all the time and money I’ve wasted on therapy over the years when all it took was a $4 cucumber face mask to turn my whole life around,” the patient said.
The UHS Events Coordinator said he plans to supplement efforts with a variety of free mental health workshops. Experts in the field will lecture on a host of topics, including “How to air out your depression on Twitter, but like, in a funny way,” “An article my mom once saw on Facebook about how you just need to drink more water,” and“How to convince guests your apartment isn’t always this much of a mess,”
Workshops will cover LGBTQ related topics as well, with essentials such as, “So you hate your dad,” “Grindr: replace feelings of emptiness with sex!” and “Maybe try bleaching your hair again?”
