When political science graduate student Mike Toje worked at the Shop ‘n Save butcher shop in Edwardsville, Illinois, he obsessively organized the refrigerated packages in neat lines placing the newest meats in the back and the oldest in the front.
Customers often sifted through the products, leaving them disorganized after they found a choice cut.
Toje’s need for cleanliness often interfered with his duties at work. He dedicated his six-hour shifts to cleaning the shop — a job which ordinarily took two hours. After others overheard him complaining about customers rearranging products, he received two work reprimands and sought treatment for his obsessive compulsive disorder through the health center at Southern Illinois University where he was earning his undergraduate degree.
Toje came to LSU to pursue his master’s degree in political science after earning his bachelor’s degree in Illinois but soon found himself battling new anxieties in an unfamiliar environment.
“It got to the point where I was hating my situation both academically and where I was living, and I noticed that I was having more and more difficulty talking to new people,” Toje said.
Toje’s OCD manifests in the repetition of activities, counting things, turning left or right, counting while washing and drying his hands, tapping and knocking and doing activities in numbers divisible by three or four. He also dealt with episodes of depression.
“It was just extreme lethargy, extreme apathy and just not caring about whether I get work done or not and just stay at home and not talk to people,” Toje said. “I would basically shut myself up and try to avoid dealing with the world.”
He went to the Psychological Services Center in Johnston Hall to combat his social anxiety and depression. During his initial appointment, he was evaluated to determine if the Psychological Services Center was the right place for him and attended his first session two weeks later.
The Psychological Services Center places patients into a need-based hierarchy and tries to get everybody in as fast as possible, said center director Tom Davis. The wait ranges from a few days to two weeks, with higher priority for people in crisis.
The Psychological Services Center, which is affiliated with the Department of Psychology, is a separate entity from the university’s Mental Health Service. Individuals providing services directly to patients are enrolled in the doctoral program for clinical psychology or school psychology and are directly supervised by psychology faculty.
Davis said the center diagnoses mental disorders such as learning disabilities, ADHD, anxiety and depression. The center’s services range from psychoeducation to psycho diagnostic testing for adults and children, though it acts only as an outpatient clinic and cannot provide emergency or walk-in services.
Patients are not prescribed medications for mental health disorders at the Psychological Services Center but receive talk therapy. “A lot of research has shown that talk therapy is usually as effective as medication,” Davis said. “The main difference is that as soon as you stop taking the medication you relapse. Research has shown that cognitive behavioral talk therapy has long lasting improvement.”
The center protects patient confidentiality from all entities including parents as long as the patient is not a minor. No individual can call the Psychological Services Center as a parent to learn about a patient file without appropriate identification and authorization, Davis said.
If students are unable to pay the center’s $60 evaluation fee and $15 per hour therapy fee, they can seek treatment at the Student Health Center through MHS.
SHC fees, including those for MHS, are included in full-time students’ fee bills and are optional for part-time students.
MHS has no official wait list and provides three to four new consultation slots with clinicians at the same time each week for new students to make appointments, said MHS clinical social worker Amy Springer.
“People fall through cracks in waiting lists. We read studies and decided not to do one,” Springer said. “We want people to have more immediate assistance. My most important job is letting students know their options.”
MHS has 13 full time clinicians and offers around 40 total new consultation slots per week for students. When the new consultation slots get booked out, the next available slot is offered, Springer said.
If students want to be seen before the next opening, Springer said they can speak with the on-call clinician during normal MHS operation hours to receive a referral to another local treatment facility or they can reach out to MHS case manager Mikki Delapp.
Delapp said she sees the students right away or within the week and helps with community referrals. She is constantly in contact with a number of community resources including Family Service of Greater Baton Rouge, Capital Area Human Services, and EXCELth Behavioral Health-Baton Rouge.
“My role is linking students to resources whether it’s on campus or off campus and making sure they are able to navigate that system because sometimes that system can be hard to navigate,” Delapp said.
Students who feel intimidated by speaking one on one with a clinician but still wish to learn about managing their mental health can attend MHS seminars as an introduction to the services provided by SHC.
Toje started therapy at the Psychological Services Center in spring 2015 and said he feels his sessions are better here than they were at Southern Illinois University because the center offers more personal and in-depth treatment.
“I am a much different person six months into my therapy sessions than I was in the beginning,” Toje said.
Toje flew to his birthplace of Albuquerque, New Mexico, last week for the first time in 18 years — just because he could.
He wanted to test himself outside his comfort zone by exploring new territory and meeting new people. He said such a trip would have been out of the question before his therapy at LSU.
“I would’ve been too frightened of meeting people and talking to them and not be able to enjoy the city before my therapy,” Toje said. “I had an amazing time.”