Adam Cooper
ENC 1102
Murray
09/05/14
Swales
This discourse will be focused on the psychological community of the UCF counseling services
and the evaluation form they extend to incoming patients.
The reason for choosing this community is not only because I feel close to it as a
psychology major and a UCF student, but because I feel passionate about mental health. This is a
field that I might be working in the coming future. A better understanding is needed of this
community by those not associated with it. A negative stigma has form with issues concerning
mental health since the very conceptualization. This schema prevents those that require the
services provided by the counseling center to not seek them for fear of how it would make them
look in the eyes of others. With this evaluation the idea of going to the counseling center for a
bad feeling or dilemma on a person’s mind will be as common place as visiting a doctor for a
bad cough.
The counseling services offered at UCF has an overall goal of helping those with a
mental health concern or just a problem that they need to talk about. It’s preserving the hearts
and minds of those that require the attention of someone that can listen and evaluate their needs.
The group exists because without it many people wouldn’t receive the help that they require and
that could spell very negative outcomes.
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Adam Cooper
ENC 1102
Murray
09/05/14
The community itself is organized in a series of stages that evaluates what kind and how
severe of care that a person might need. The first being the mental health evaluation form given
to those that first enter the center. It gives care givers an idea of what kind of attention that
individual requires. This form can pass hands from a counselor that has a beginner’s position to
an individual that has their master’s degree in mental health. The form is present in the initial
session of counseling to make notes and observations based on what the counselor notices about
the person they’re providing recourse to, saving time in the event that the individual receiving
counseling requires a new counselor.
If an individual still requires counseling then on subsequent visits they will need to fill
out a different form upon checking in. This form is a means of tracking progress and regress that
may have occurred during the course of the program. And at anytime during the counseling the
counselor will ask him/her how they think the sessions have been affecting them. These are
attempts to receive feedback from patients to gauge how they might be progressing with the
counseling.
The counseling community is part of the Health Center at UCF and often uses their
systems, such as the psychological part of the health center to gain information on patients that
are utilizing both organizations to receive treatment. The genre can vary from purely technical
analysis of the patient’s symptoms and recommended actions.
As a psychological community all forms of language are geared toward medical and
psychological jargon. Forms, positions, and the like are referred to by acronym and shortened
versions of the title as a means of saving time. However, the patient to counselor communication
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Adam Cooper
ENC 1102
Murray
09/05/14
is much more formal than what the counselor to counselor communication would be. For all
tense and purposes the communication between the patient and the counselor is as standard as
most, only with a more… formal approach.
The number of counselors at the health center can only reach a certain number; the
building’s capacity can only provide so much space. And because of this the number of
counselors that are receiving training, or getting experience to finish their respective degree have
to be limited by the amount of staff that must be trained medical professionals to meet the needs
of the public. And because of these limitations of experts there can only be so many patients.
Patients are not ‘limited’ in a way by how many visits that can receive, but are encouraged to
seek further counseling off campus if it is required by a certain number of visits.
As I look more in depth to this community, I want see how effective the mental health
evaluation form is in the communication from start to finish. How well does it transfer the
problems being experienced by the patient to the counselor receiving him or her? I want to see if
the information that essentially a bunch of check boxes really does give the counselor a good
impression of the gravity of the situation.
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