Individual Counseling & Psychiatric Services

How Can Individual Counseling Help Me?

Through this service, students meet with us and collaboratively work to determine and agree upon goals of treatment.

We work within a time-effective frame that offers different courses of action based on students’ needs. Our providers employ different strategies to help students meet their personal and academic goals, in a way that honors their intersecting, empowered, and/or oppressed identities.

Counseling is recommended to address a wide range of life circumstances that affect one’s ability to thrive, including but not limited to:

Personal/Wellness issues: Anxiety, depression, loneliness, grief, body image, disordered eating, self-injurious and/or substance use behaviors
Relationship issues: Partners, roommates, family, colleagues, supervisors
Biopsychosocial and identity-based issues: Adjustment, acculturation, sexual orientation and/or gender identity concerns, disability and neurodiversity
Academic concerns: Motivation, performance anxiety, perfectionism
Other issues: Trauma, sexual and intimate partner violence, the impact of racism, sexism, heterosexism, ableism, xenophobia, fatphobia, and other forms of institutionalized oppression on students’ individual/collective development and their sense of well-being.

What are Psychiatric Services?

Our team is made up of psychiatrists and a Psychiatric Mental Health Nurse Practitioner who have completed specialty training in psychopharmacology and psychotherapy. Our psychiatrists offer limited psychotherapy, psychiatric consultation within the Duke community, medication evaluations, ongoing medication management within the scope of our services, and referrals for needs that fall outside the scope of care that we provide.

Medication management can include treatment for depression, anxiety, difficulty sleeping, eating problems, and more. We do not evaluate or treat students for attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder, but we can help with appropriate referral when this is a concern.
To get started, students will meet with a counselor before being referred to a medication evaluation with a psychiatry provider. Our medication evaluations last 50-minutes and medication management follow up visits are 30 minutes. Depending on the time of the semester, there may be a wait to see a psychiatry provider.

Looking to start services with CAPS?

You can either call 919-660-1000 or visit us in person on Mondays & Tuesdays; 9:00am - 6:00pm or Wednesday - Friday; 9:00am - 4:00pm.
You will then complete some paperwork and meet with a member of our staff for approximately 15 - 20 minutes to discuss your specific goals.
A collaborative plan will be developed based on your needs. This may include referrals to a psychiatrist, a community mental health provider, group counseling, or one of our counselors.