MISSION

The primary mission of CAPS is to support the academic mission of the university. We accomplish this by fostering the intellectual, emotional, social, spiritual, and psychological well-being of Emory students through the provision of various clinical services, community-level interventions, consultation, collaboration with campus partners, advising of student groups, and clinical training.

SERVICES OFFERED

In service of our mission, CAPS offers an array of mental health services to support both individuals and the larger Emory community. CAPS provides free, confidential services for students including: initial screenings; crisis intervention; community referrals; brief individual and couples therapy; various types of groups (interpersonal process, support, discussion); consultation; community outreach and intervention services; a biofeedback/stress clinic; and educational workshops focused on stress management, emotion regulation, and skill building.

A COMMUNITY APPROACH

Emory University is invested in supporting the varied mental health needs of its diverse students, which involves attention to both individual student needs and the needs of its overall student body. This support is provided through multiple offices in addition to CAPS. For example, support is available through Student Health Services Psychiatry or Primary Care, Office of Health Promotions, Student Case Management and Intervention Services, Residence Life, Career Services, Office of Spiritual & Religious Life, Office of Undergraduate Education, etc. We believe that it is important to meet the needs of both our individual students and the overall student body in creating a healthy campus community. Within that framework, we feel fortunate, at Emory, to be able to offer such a wide breadth of support services to our students. As we move forward, we aim to build more ways of enhancing mental health services at Emory. Our goal is to continue to improve on the efficacy of our clinical services while also aspiring to make them a bit less necessary as we work collectively to make Emory an increasingly healthy campus environment for all of our students.

BRIEF THERAPY MODEL

The demand for services at CAPS is high and continues to grow. In order to meet the mental health needs of as many students as possible, CAPS operates from a brief-therapy model. Currently, this involves a general guideline to limit individual/couples counseling to 12 sessions beyond intake. For students needing more support, we can connect them with additional CAPS services, other campus resources, or facilitate referrals to providers in the community, including low-cost options.

Because we operate from a social justice lens and are committed to meeting the mental health needs of both individuals and the overall Emory student community, we do our best to exercise clinical judgment in deciding when and why it’s most appropriate to extend services beyond our typical session limit and when to facilitate a referral to another service within CAPS, on campus, or in the local community. There is always a difficult balance to maintain between providing sufficient depth of our services and meeting the breadth of demand for those services. Invariably, the wishes of many students for CAPS to provide unlimited individual services must make way for the parameters of what is reasonable to provide given our mission and inherent resource limits. In considering how to balance the depth/breadth dilemma, we recognize that our students do not arrive here with the same level of financial resources, and we must navigate through the realities of what it means to provide good clinical care using our best clinical judgment, while also considering issues of safety, equity, and social justice.

WHAT WE DON’T OFFER

Some of the services outside our scope-of-service include: psychiatric services/medication management (available instead at Student Health Services-Psychiatry), formal psychological testing, documentation for disability accommodations, court-ordered mental health treatment, and letters of support for Emotional Support Animals.