In addition to hospital facilities, many metropolitan areas have established organizations to provide counseling services on an inpatient basis. Some are private; some are public. They offer an alternative to hospitalization. They tend to be more informal and open and are managed by their own staffs of professional counselors and psychiatrists. These residential care facilities usually are intended for stays of from one to several weeks. They have a variety of counseling programs, ranging from individual therapy to group counseling and vocational guidance.
One way to locate such an inpatient organization is to telephone a crisis intervention (sometimes called suicide prevention) number likely to be listed at the beginning of your telephone directory. A volunteer probably will answer your call and should be able to direct you to inpatient facilities available in your area.
ACADEMIC SOURCES OF COUNSELING
Counseling is one of the services available to full- and part-time students who are enrolled in junior or four-year colleges and graduate schools. Many educational institutions offer individual counseling, normally by counseling psychologists, and all colleges offer academic advising in the context of a certain amount of vocational guidance.
Colleges with programs in counseling and psychology usually also offer certain classes with a practical, problem-solving focus. Although they may not be specifically intended to help individual students with life problems, this is in fact what they frequently end up doing. It is inevitable for students in a practically oriented counseling class to apply much that they learn to their own problems. Many class meetings of this kind tend to be almost indistinguishable from group therapy sessions: students receive guidance from a professionally trained instructor, exchange views, and express personal concerns. You might think of college classes with a practical, psychological emphasis especially if you are drawn to therapy as an opportunity for general personal growth.
Classes of this kind may be offered in a college's regular programs, which are sometimes open only to students working toward a degree. Other similar opportunities, however, are available through many continuing education, or adult education, programs. Many secondary school districts offer practical, psychologically-focused classes for adults who do not choose to enter a degree program. This is also true of community, state, and many private colleges.
Colleges and private professionals offer intensive workshops with a variety of counseling emphases. Two-day weekend workshops have become especially popular. Topics range from alcoholism, drug abuse, child-rearing problems, and separation and divorce to illness and chronic pain, marital concerns, depression, stress control, and so on. Newspapers announce counseling workshops; you will often find notices about them posted in public and college libraries.
SOME REFLECTIONS ON WHERE YOU
GO FOR COUNSELING
You should bear in mind that where you go for counseling or therapy is nothing more than an address. What is important is what happens in your relationship with your counselor or therapist. If you have found a therapist whom you respect and feel motivated to work with, it makes little difference, as far as the benefits you obtain from therapy are concerned, whether your therapist works in private practice or offers his or her services through an agency, school, hospital, or residential facility.
On the other hand, where you go for counseling will greatly determine the price you will pay for services and frequently whether health insurance will cover your expenses. To some extent, where you go can sometimes, as we have noted, influence the quality of care and individual attention you receive. But this is a generalization; you frequently will be able to locate excellent care through less expensive facilities. This will depend to some extent on luck, but more on the amount of effort you put into locating the kind of help you may need.