Date: February 7, 2007
Contact: Lindsay Gladstone
Governors State University
Phone: (708) 534-7090
Fax: (708) 534-8399
Email: l-gladstone@govst.edu
For Immediate Release
University Park, Illinois, February 7, 2007 – Recently it was announced that valuable social services and medical supports relied on by so many poor and underinsured members of our communities will soon be curtailed as local and county budgets are tightened. Frequently, counseling services are more adversely impacted by these cuts, and the people they serve are drastically affected.
"Community counseling helps people in so many ways. Reducing or eliminating these services effects an individual’s productivity, family life, parenting skills, and so much more,” said Dr. Byron Waller, Co-Clinical Coordinator of the Counseling Lab Governors State University in University Park.
“It is especially important at these times for people to know about the free counseling services available at the university. While we can not pick up all the slack created by budget cuts at the social service agencies, we want to help as many people as we can,” added Waller.
The Division of Psychology and Counseling at GSU offers free counseling services as part of its training program for advanced graduate counseling students. Students are studying for their Master of Arts in Counseling, learning about family, couples, individual, and vocational counseling.
Counseling sessions conducted on the GSU campus help both the client and the student. Sessions may be audio or video taped to assist in the evaluation and learning processes. Faculty members, who are also licensed counselors, supervise the sessions.
According to Waller, assistance is offered on a wide range of situations and problems such as parent/child relationships, depression, stress, communication difficulties, loneliness, unemployment, and lack of self-confidence. Children under the age of 18 are only seen in conjunction with their parents.
The Counseling Lab is located at Governors State University, 1 University Parkway, University Park. For more information, call (708) 534-4545.
