ITHACA, N.Y.
Janie Cisneros was having a crisis and needed to talk to a counselor. But there would be no embarrassing or intimidating visit to the campus clinic.
Instead, Sigrid Frandsen-Pechenik took Cisneros to the mall, where they had coffee and talked in English and Spanish.
It was not the usual approach to mental health counseling. But as campuses become more diverse, colleges are finding the old ways don’t always work.
There are language barriers and cultural stigmas that equate mental health problems with being weak or crazy. There are the pressures of immigrant families who send their children to college and do not expect to see them fail. And since Sept. 11, there are pressures over visas, homeland security and privacy.
Many students choose not to ask for help, counselors say. So Frandsen-Pechenik, the assistant director of counseling and psychological services at Cornell University, is part of a national effort to take counseling out of the office and closer to students.
The idea is to break from the traditional model of trips to the counseling center, scheduled appointments and 50-minute sessions, which have their own built-in stresses.
