Kendall Little The university’s Counseling And Psychological Services center wants to speak to students about any issue in their lives, from break-ups to burnout. Kathryn Kominars is going to start making home visits in the fall. The director of FAU’s counseling center won’t be knocking on your door, but she and her staff will sit in the lobby of your residence halls – willing to talk for free about whatever bothers you.
“A couple of years ago, I met with one student who was going through a breakup, and we met a total of three times over the course of a month to assist her through the intensity of the experience that she was having with the loss of the relationship,” Kominars said.
Kominars has been leading FAU’s Counseling And Psychological Services center, better known as CAPS, since 2019. She knew one of the big problems with campus counseling centers is that students think they only exist to handle big problems.
Break-ups, loneliness, and burnout are just a few things that students can discuss with CAPS – even just the anxiety of moving to a new place, as Raya Levine found out. The junior marketing major headed to CAPS after her freshman orientation and was able to make substantial progress with her mental health.
Kominars wants to sweat the small stuff. Why? Because she believes no problem is too small for CAPS.
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“The thing I was able to get the most help with was control over my anxiety,” she said. “That was something that I was struggling really hard with due to starting a school in a new state and not knowing anyone.”
During the pandemic, CAPS moved online to continue assisting students. “Once we got into COVID, they helped me with anxiety during work and having to live with family [that] I’ve never lived with before. I was having panic attacks multiple times a month when I never got them before,” Levine said. “I was able to stop them due to the techniques I was taught.” Kominars wants to teach students strategies to better their mental health daily, not just during sessions. The American College Health Association, an organization that advocates for college students’ mental and physical well-being, reported that 53.3% of college students felt lonely and 82.3% of students felt moderate to high levels of stress.
