Beyond teaching: The University mental health and psychological assistance unit (UAPSMU) at USAL

Abstract

College Mental Health Counselling is a specialized service offered in several Spanish Universities some decades ago. Salamanca University is between the pioneers to offer university community a specialized service of Psychological Aid and First Intervention on Mental Health within their own campus, for a population group characterized by rootlessness of their family environment, usually far from their home environment, and with an age between 18 and 25, a period with life crises and severe pathological onsets. In this paper some data on the history of this Unit in Salamanca University is offered, from the beginning of the service in 1996 to their change in 2003. The service was free-cost, only for university people, and the professional staff included professors and professional psychologists under a scheme of non-profit collaborations. The main indicators of the interventions and people attended during this period are exposed, and also the main intervention programs developed: Facing Exams Anxiety; Care on rootlessness from family environment and attachment problems, between others. Finally we made some considerations on the structure and objectives for this type of services.