ABSTRACT

In this article, we examine how Counseling and Psychological Services (CAPS) at a large private university in the western United States addressed the abrupt suspension of in-person mental health services and switch to telebehavioral health due to the Covid-19 pandemic. We used descriptive data, binary logistic regression, and hierarchical linear modeling to investigate changes in number of sessions and clients, use of online mental health platforms, and changes in clients’ psychological functioning. Overall, we found that CAPS had a decrease in scheduled appointments (including intake) and no change in attendance rates. We estimate that premature termination impacted about 32–34% of individual therapy clients and 29–37% of group clients. The number of new users for our online therapeutic platforms did not appear to be affected. Clients in 2020 were not significantly more distressed than clients in the previous 3 years and we found no significant differences in outcome between 2020 and previous years, indicating that levels of distress and treatment trajectories remained similar across years. Future research should focus on longer-term client outcomes as well as increasing accessibility to therapy in pandemic conditions.

摘要

在本文中，我们研究了美国西部一所大型私立大学的咨询和心理服务 (CAPS) 如何解决因 Covid-19 大流行而突然暂停面对面心理健康服务并转向远程行为健康的问题。我们使用描述性数据、二元逻辑回归和分层线性模型来调查会话和客户数量的变化、在线心理健康平台的使用以及客户心理功能的变化。总体而言，我们发现 CAPS 的预定约会（包括入学人数）减少，出勤率没有变化。我们估计过早终止影响了大约 32-34% 的个人治疗客户和 29-37% 的团体客户。我们在线治疗平台的新用户数量似乎没有受到影响。2020 年的客户并没有比前 3 年的客户更痛苦，我们发现 2020 年与前几年的结果没有显着差异，这表明痛苦的程度和治疗轨迹在各年间保持相似。未来的研究应侧重于长期客户结果以及在大流行情况下增加治疗的可及性。