Emporia State Counseling Services has partnered with TELUS, a free mental health app that allows students to call, text, or chat with an online counselor from anywhere at any time of day.
The app provides students with 24-hour access to crisis services in 150 languages and allows ESU students taking classes outside of Kansas to access a counselor. It also gives students who already receive counseling at ESU a counselor to reach out to when on-campus counseling services are unavailable.
Counseling provided by the app is meant to be short-term, solution-focused treatment. TELUS will provide a couple of sessions to students and will then work with ESU counselors or therapists in a student’s community to connect them to longer term mental healthcare services.
“Partnering with TELUS was an opportunity presented to the Regent universities, and we have been working on getting it started and initiated since December of 2022,” said Lindsay Bays, Senior Director of Mental Health and Counseling at the ESU Student Wellness Center. “It’s been a lot of hard work between multiple departments. It’s been sort of a labor of love, I would call it, to be able to get it out for folks.”
ESU’s counseling services is open from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. Monday through Friday and now offers free immediate access appointments to students who walk in during open hours.