After lockdown, university takes student counselling online

When teaching and learning activities moved online at the United States International University-Africa (USIU-Africa), so did student counselling services, which are continuing to reach out and support students through what is known as ‘teletherapy’.

According to Ruthie Rono, professor of psychology and deputy vice-chancellor for academic and student affairs at USIU-Africa, the closure of classes and the move to full-time online study evoked anxiety on the part of students who were dealing with stress at multiple levels. While some needed support for basic adjustment issues, others required deeper therapy.

Speaking about the mental health impacts of COVID-19 at a webinar hosted by the Alliance for African Partnership, a consortium of 11 universities in Africa and Michigan State University (MSU) in the United States, she said early student fears were focused on the move to online learning, access to technology, the impact of power blackouts, their ability to complete classes, write online examinations and, in the case of final year students, to graduate.

“So many students who sought assistance from the counselling centre sought reassurance … mainly [over] issues to do with anxiety and the fear of not being able to complete their classes. And some of them are in graduating class, thinking, ‘If I don’t finish, what will happen to me, I’ll not be able to actually graduate’.”

USIU-Africa is a non-profit private university based in Nairobi, Kenya and has about 7,000 students on average in every semester, 15% of whom are international students drawn from 71 countries.

Transition to full-time online classes

Rono said the university shutdown happened in week 10 of a 14-week semester. While classes at the USIU-Africa were mainly face-to-face, they were often enhanced through the use of online tools such as Blackboard. The transition to full-time online teaching and learning was therefore relatively smooth, but students nevertheless required reassurance and some practical training, both of which were provided, she said.

As the lockdown progressed, counsellors were able to identify other sets of issues facing students. These related to the challenges of working at home and included difficulty finding secluded study spaces and managing family members, and conflict with parents and-or siblings.

“Some of our students are mature students, they have children; some of them were also continuing to work from home, so the juggling of all these activities … these were some of the challenges that many of our students faced.”

She said school fears were coupled with fears about income and sustainability as many of the students were also trying to carry on working part-time.

Rono said some students already suffering from depression experienced relapses, and the counselling department continued to work with them to get them back on track.

Rono said some of the students felt that their home environment was “hostile”.

“They were used to hanging out with their friends, going out with them. Some of them didn’t have good relationships with their parents, and now they are at home all the time, they are with parents all the time…”

Involving families in therapy

Rono said the counsellors’ services at times extended beyond individual students to families. “We had some students who had been dealing with alcohol or drug abuse through the counselling centre, but whose parents were unaware of these issues.

“And so now that they were restricted to home, those kind of struggles came to be known by those parents who had not known before, and so our counselling centre went beyond just handling the students but also to include family-type therapy – all online of course.”

“And so at the end of the day, we concluded that we need to do much more in working with parents and helping them to develop skills, especially in healthy parenting… Because we found that the way they interacted with students … affected the students’ mental health as well as their performance in learning.”

In addition to teletherapy, the counselling centre provided regular information to the academic community about identifying and managing stress, dealing with information overload through the media, how to seek support and help others. For students, there was information on how to deal with stress and anxiety during examinations. Students who have HIV also receive ongoing support, said Rono.

She said a partnership with a local radio station which gave counsellors the opportunity to respond to calls from member of the public in a regular radio broadcast, was continuing, as was the peer-counselling club comprising student volunteers who are trained to reach out to peers and act as a first port of call for assistance.

Rono said USIU-Africa Vice-Chancellor Professor Paul Zeleza motivated staff by calling each of them individually to find out how they were doing, offering them support, and hearing their contributions towards dealing with the pandemic.

Challenging stigma

She said one of the biggest lessons learned from the pandemic experience is that stigma still exists around mental health care, both nationally and in communities, and there was a need to raise awareness and continue to nurture a mental healthcare-seeking culture.

“As a university we are pioneers in the training of psychologists. And over the years we have seen changes, we have seen improvement, but there is still a long way to go before our citizens embrace counselling and psychotherapy as a means of handling mental health,” she said.

Rono also called for a detailed research study into how students are coping. “How much of what they have been going through is going to affect their long-term mental health? We can assume they are OK because they come to class and so on, but we need to do further research to find out how they are really doing and what implications this has for their future.”

“We also need to understand better how we can build resilience,” she said. “We need to continue to train people in coping strategies. This pandemic … we have not seen the end of it, so we need to build coping strategies. We need to help people to find help, and we need to know how they are doing, so that we can continue to provide the support that they need.”

Rono said it was clear that regular, clear and caring communication was important.

“Otherwise small issues, small problems can flare up, because of the stress and anxiety that people are experiencing … And also caring, showing empathy for what people are going through, is important. We may know that our faculty are going to class, for example, but maybe some of their spouses might have been retrenched and they no longer have jobs. Or they may have family members who are struggling with COVID-19 – and we don’t know.

“So it is good to continue reaching out, continue to show caring… otherwise we will have a workforce which is stressed and depressed. And when we finally come back to campus … I am not sure when that will be … we might find that some of us never survived, or are mentally affected to the point where we are unable to be active.”