UCI comes to faculty, student aid

Jeff Benson

Some university faculty, staff and students here have personally

experienced loss from the Dec. 26 tsunami in Southeast Asia. Some

just can’t bear to watch the painful images on TV, and some are even

questioning God’s resolve.

People are affected in many different ways, and now there are

places UC Irvine community members can go for help.

When the university’s Faculty and Staff Counseling Center and its

Student Counseling Center opened their doors Monday, workers were

prepared to give free and confidential one-on-one counseling to

members of the campus community and their families, some of whom are

having trouble dealing with the tsunami disaster.

The faculty counseling center, which used to permit five free

one-hour sessions per year before referring campus staff to other

mental health agencies, is allowing unlimited visits for those who

visit for tsunami-related reasons, director Njeeri wa Ngugi said.

Most of the people seeking help from the center haven’t lost

friends or family members in Africa or Asia, but are losing sleep

worrying about people half a world away. Others just want to donate

money to organizations such as the American Red Cross or UNICEF, and

the center provides contact information, she said.

“It’s an unusual situation,” Ngugi said. “People aren’t

necessarily directly affected because they’ve lost loved ones, but

some people want to give, or they’re affected by what’s going on. An

issue to a lot of people was the grief over the magnitude [of the

catastrophe].”

Ngugi declined to say how many people are currently benefiting

from the faculty counseling centers’ services. The doctor-client

privilege at the center gives visitors confidentiality, she said. The

center has also received numerous phone calls suggesting meditation

as a remedy, and Ngugi said she’s strongly considering added it as a

suggestion.

Though turnout at the student counseling center has been modest

thus far, it may increase as news of the tragedy continues to unfold,

and students look for ways to cope with it, said assistant vice

chancellor for counseling and health services Thomas Parham.

The student center provides individual and group therapy and

counseling, program development and outreach, and crisis

intervention, he said.

Eleven people are servicing a student body of about 25,000

students, he said.

“With the few people we’ve seen, some people just have anxiety

about situations, or ambiguity about friends and loved ones,” Parham

said. “People they know may have been traveling in the region and may

have been impacted by that. Or they could have their own sense of

uneasiness about what’s going on. It’s not objective data that

they’re worried about; it’s the fear of the unknown.”

Psychologist and minister Doyle Edson is one of three people

helping out in the faculty counseling center. Faculty and staff come

to him for spiritual support.

“It’s interesting,” he said. “These people cannot keep from

watching [tsunami disaster coverage]. As a rule, they cannot turn the

television off about it, and they search channels to get more

information about it. And that’s part of the problem -- they can’t

get it out of their mind.”

To combat this problem, Edson gives them spiritual alternatives,

like blending with other members of their respective faiths or

elevating their state of consciousness, out of the daily grind, to

become more reconnected with life.