Resources:
Tompkins County Mental Health Service
Reflection:
Throughout my time at Cornell, I have been on a personal journey to improve my mental health. As I wrap up my last weeks as a second semester senior, I look back on my first few weeks on campus, where my quest to improve my mental health began. Before I got here, I struggled with mental health in a plethora of ways and working on improving it has been a goal of mine since I stepped foot on this campus in June of 2019. I was excited to try Let’s Talk, use Cornell’s counseling services, and CAPS. My first week of classes during the Prefreshman Summer Program, I went to my first Let’s Talk session. During the precovid world, I was trying my best to make the best of Cornell’s resources and for the most part, it was helpful for me. As fate would have it, COVID hit and I got the email I was being sent home while at a CAPS appointment. As I walked out of Cornell Health, I was suddenly lost again. It felt as if the progress I made the past several months was all undone with one email.
During lockdown, I continued to do CAPS appointments on Zoom. I met with a counselor every other week since CAPS didn’t have the capacity to schedule students for weekly appointments. They continued to be helpful but I eventually wanted to try other resources that were available outside of Cornell. That took me to browsing a number of websites (listed above) that my CAPS counselor recommended in addition to browsing CAPS’ referral page to try to find other counselors. These services have also been helpful to a number of my peers, I recommend checking them out when considering mental health resources in Ithaca. My time at Cornell was academically stimulating but would not have been what it was if it wasn’t for prioritizing mental health.