The Mission and Values of Counseling & Wellness Services

Our Mission

To provide accessible, multidisciplinary, and evidence-based services for the purposes of delivering culturally-conscious care and promoting integrated self-awareness, comprehensive coping resources, personal and social development, and campus-wide community building.

Our Core Values

  • Compassionate, Multiculturally-Focused Care
  • Holistic, Intersectional Identity Development 
  • Mind-Body-Heart Awareness and Empowerment
  • Strengths- and Resilience-Based Resources
  • Systemic, Community-Based Change

News and Updates from Counseling & Wellness Services

April 2023

Week of April 3

April 7 will be the final day for new psychiatric patients.  We will resume accepting new patients at the start of the Fall Semester.

Week of April 17

Starting the week of April 17 our counseling services will be transitioning to a formal “Flexible-Care Model” for the remainder of the semester.  All clinicians on staff will have their schedules primarily open for students to be able to contact our office (via phone or email) on any weekday and schedule an appointment for either that day or within 24 hours (Monday through Friday). Students will also have the options of meeting for 30, 45, or 60-minute appointments as well as the choice of who to meet with (based on the availability at that time). The model of care, also known as “Same-Day Access,” is designed to offer greater access during times of higher demand and to tailor the services to the needs of a student at that time. According to Meek (2021), “Defining features include same-day access, variable sessions lengths (including concise sessions), an immediate treatment approach (goal-focused counseling), and customizable follow-up plans.” In this way, students can access our counseling appointments as much or as little as they would like during this period and co-create a plan that best fits their current concerns and goals. To schedule a “same-day appointment” in the coming weeks:

  • Please call x3145 or email counseling@bowdoin.edu
  • If you have a preference for counselor, let us know and we will do our best to accommodate
  • Request an appointment time for either that same day or within 24 hours
  • Select an appointment length of 30-, 45-, or 60-minutes

Please know that during these weeks, we will still have on-call services and crisis management through our counseling staff and our telehealth platform (LifeWorks/MySSP), as well as opportunities for maintaining general well-being through our various wellness programming and fitness classes.  

We in Counseling and Wellness Services wish you all great health, happiness, and success in the coming weeks. Take good care.

References:

Our Message of Solidarity 

You are seen. You are heard. You are valued.

We in Counseling and Wellness Services join the rest of the Bowdoin community in taking a stand against the deplorable and unconscionable acts of injustice, oppression, inequity, and systemic racism that are rampant in American society and deeply impact our students, our wider communities, and our nation. While this has long been the legacy of our nation, we recognize how the year 2020 was yet another turning point in the collective consciousness regarding the deep, systemic roots and traumatic effects of racism in America. We re-commit our services and resources to promote and uplift Black health and well-being, to seek healing, justice, and safety for Black communities, and do our part to remedy and heal the deadly effects of structural racism and racial trauma.

As we continue in this global pandemic, we acknowledge the ongoing burdens of financial crisis, sickness and death, healthcare and housing shortage, political and social unrest, anxiety and uncertainty, and loneliness and disconnection.  We also acknowledge the disproportionate burden of illness, death, and emotional distress on communities of color. This unacceptable reality is the result of centuries of systemic inequities in our healthcare system as well as every other sector of society. We recognize how even in the events of domestic terrorism on our US Capitol and other places in America in early 2021, systemic oppression and inequity are evident in the differential response of police and government officials to those responsible for this terrorism and those nonviolently protesting over the last year in the name of justice for Black lives.

Unequivocally: Black Lives Matter.

If we truly value our emotional well-being, both individually and collectively, we must contend with this inherent darkness, this inherited shadow on our culture and our history that is racism and racial traumatization – both inwardly and outwardly. It is about utterly examining ourselves and deeply understanding the basic assumptions which guide the way we live our lives and make us complicit in systems of inequity and injustice. It is about interrogating, disrupting, and dismantling systems of power that serve to oppress and exploit Black people, communities of color, and other marginalized populations. It is about being true to who we say we are, what values we hold, and the world we want to build for ourselves and each other.

We each have a role to play in the healing and liberation of our society. This is not solely about uplifting, protecting, and honoring our Black communities and other marginalized communities. This is also about each individual having the support, dignity, and freedom to be able to understand themselves and their history, to be who they are, to feel that they belong, and to realize the kind of world they want to live in and how they can contribute to it.

We realize it is never enough to issue statements of solidarity or read the latest trending racial justice literature. We re-commit to doing the very deep, personal, and transformative work of uprooting our individual racism and actively demanding justice, empowerment, and healing in every domain of human society.  

Click for Resources for Racial Trauma.