Kerry Karaffa is a University of Missouri Counseling Center psychologist that is embedded within the MU College of Veterinary Medicine.
He works directly with vet students to provide mental health services. He spoke with KBIA's Anna Spidel about how embedded mental health providers can help improve access to mental health support for students who need it.
Missouri Health Talks gathers Missourians’ stories of access to healthcare in their own words.
Kerry Karaffa: So primarily, we provide individual counseling for veterinary students, graduate students, interns, and residents. In addition to the individual work, we also offer consultation for students, for staff members, things like that.
We do quite a bit of outreach and mental health education. So for example, some of the topics we've focused on recently are things like mental health literacy, you know, being able to recognize and identify signs and symptoms of mental health problems.
We've done seminars on helping others in crisis, assessing suicide risk, things like that - evidence based stress management, sleep, substance use interpersonal effectiveness skills for veterinary practice, things like that. And then in addition to that, we also conduct some research.
"In a study we did a couple of years ago, the biggest barriers cited by 90% of the sample - and this had 573 participants - 90% said lack of time to attend appointments."
Topics that we’ve focused on recently are actually best practices in developing embedded counseling models, things like mental health experiences among both vet students and professionals as well as barriers to seeking services, including things like stigma.
I mean, in a study we did a couple of years ago, the biggest barriers cited by 90% of the sample - and this had 573 participants - 90% said lack of time to attend appointments.
The second barrier that was endorsed by about 62% was cost of mental health services. The third barrier that was endorsed by about 60% was difficulty scheduling an appointment.
In veterinary curriculum, it's very fast paced. When they're in the didactic portion of training, they're in classes for most of the day. So time really is of the essence.
The other thing is a lot of vet schools around the country, they're not physically located on Main Campus. Because they have facilities for large animals and things like that, you can't put them right in the middle of main campus.
And so most of the time, they're physically not close to University Counseling Centers. So when you have an embedded therapist, they're able to schedule appointments between classes between labs, it's as simple as just coming downstairs or walking down the hallway.
We've also done things specifically here to streamline the process for scheduling. So, rather than having to call and talk to someone at the front desk and then play email tag, the students are actually able to email a specific resource account that we have set up and then they get an auto response and ask for the contact information and ask for their availability. And so then we're able to get right back to them with a spot that's available.
And I think another benefit is there are some, you know, kind of as I've been speaking about unique nuances of the culture of the curriculum. Trying to explain sometimes to a provider your schedule, when your schedule is literally changing week to week.
When you're embedded, you know, in the culture, we start to learn the ins and outs of the courses, we start to learn the ins and outs of the exams. And so we're able to maybe advise students in a way that's more nuanced.
