Sometimes people can feel overwhelmed by intense or troubling feelings like fear, anger, sorrow, confusion, or self-rejection. Strong pain can come along with a sense of loneliness, paralysis, or urges to do things that risk your safety or the safety of the community. In these moments, it's often helpful to have someone to talk to or ask for help. Family, friends, and teammates are often good sources of support and, here at LU, you always have the option to seek consultation with a counselor. During the day, you are welcome to request an urgent zoom or phone call by calling UCPS and expressing the wish for emergent help, even if you've never talked to us before. After hours or on the weekends you can reach the on-call counselor by calling UCPS, waiting for our message, and pressing "0" to talk to a clinician. The on-call clinician is also available to consult if you are concerned about another student or community member. However, if you feel that immediate support and supervision is needed to manage overwhelming urges to harm yourself or someone else, please call 9-1-1 or go to your nearest emergency room.
When you use our after-hours line, you'll be connected to a counselor who can talk to you about what is happening, offer you support, and help you decide what the next best steps to protect your safety and wellbeing might be. Urgent support is brief and aimed at regaining a sense of emotional control, discussing coping tools, and planning for safety. While these conversations offer comfort and concrete help, they are not therapy as the work focuses on brief, solution-focused intervention to assess the current situation and arrange for further help if needed.
What Happens If I Call?
The on-call counselor will talk to you about your current concern, whether it is about you or someone else, as well as ask you about your safety as it relates to possible suicide, self-harm, harm to others, substance use, and interpersonal violence, etc. If you're struggling to stay safe, we will work with you to create an immediate safety plan, as well as a contingency plan should you find you need some more help. Depending on the nature and intensity of your concern, we may enlist the help of campus and community partners like LUPD or our local hospital. The goal of our intervention is to provide you the level of support you would need to be able to feel and stay safe.
Worried About a Friend?
If you're worried about a friend, teammate, or fellow member of the LU community you are also welcome to call the on-call clinician and discuss your concerns. If the person you're talking about is in imminent danger of hurting themselves or someone else, we will enlist campus partners to assist you in getting that person to a hospital or safe location. You are also welcome to call along with that person so that you can both participate in talking about the issue and planning for safety.
What About Confidentiality?
Some students may be hesitant to discuss concerns with someone else - which is understandable! Generally concerns discussed stay confidential, however there are some exceptions. If you want to end your life, hurt someone else, or are in immediate danger from someone else and do not have a reliable way to stay safe, we will likely need to enlist more resources. This can mean letting the Dean-on-call know what is happening, helping you to get to the hospital, or helping you call on the protection of LUPD. Additionally, should you disclose that a child or elderly person is getting hurt, we will likely need to give that information to the relevant social service agency to make sure that resources are used to stop harm and keep that person safe. Outside of these restrictions, we will do our best to respect your autonomy to determine when you think it would be helpful to include someone else and let them know what is going on.