Be Well at the Mount

Mental Wellness at Any Time and on the Line

By Cody Nathanson | Assistant Editor

With the rollout of MWCC’s new “Be Well at the Mount” program, students can expect an easier time accessing mental health services on and off campus alongside a new host of options that give greater control to their mental health.

As of September 8, MWCC teamed up with mental health service and wellness provider Christie Campus, a Massachusetts-based company currently supporting over 70 campuses and just over 600,000 students across the U.S. The 30-year-old health insurance company now turned mental health provider, is still relatively new in the venture, only having made the switch back in 2018.

Although prior mental health services at the Mount offered both in person and online counseling, this new partnership also provides the college with year-round 24/7 access to certified counselors, telehealth visits over the phone, and additional wellness resources like coping strategies and mindfulness programs.  In practice, “Be Well at the Mount” is a sort of mental health service re-launch that is aiming to make practicing mental health as convenient and as accessible as possible.

The brainpower behind the mental team-up between MWCC and Christie Campus radiated from the Mount’s one and only Mental Health Counselor, Melissa Manzi. In a conversation with Manzi, she talked about her “holistic” view and purpose of mental health services. She stated, “… it’s not just about a mental health condition that they have, it’s about how it affects everything that they’re doing.”

Manzi explained that for students who might prefer to stay home, lack transportation, or maybe want to be more selective with their therapist, they have that option. “If you want options, this service gives you all the options,” said Manzi. She continued, “Before you would just have one councilor, but now you have a choice.”

In an interview with the Executive Vice President of Client Engagement of Christie Campus, Amaura Kemmerer, she mentioned that the demand for mental health services has “exploded” and that “it’s been hard for even well-resourced colleges…to keep up with that demand.”

Kemmerer also stated that alongside their service’s intended goal to “wrap around college and university counseling center[s] to help fill demand”, that it’s also about providing “more paths” and “more choices” in how students engage with their mental health. “It just opens the door for so many more students to be able to get access to the care they need without getting stuck in a waiting list…,” added Kemmerer.

“When it comes to mental health, we are always talking about a range and a spectrum,” said Kemmerer.

The spectrum according to Kemmerer covers students “that might have a really bad day or a [have] conflict in a relationship”, or are expressing “symptoms of anxiety, depression, [or] struggling with grief.” She added, “that it all starts with a phone call to that 24/7 line, regardless of what’s happening for a student.”

Manzi similarly touched upon the “spectrum” of students’ issues, saying how she views her work more “holistically” and how often she plays the role of “coach” to meet the different needs of the student.

“I realize that everyone has a different way of responding…,” said Manzi. She went on to explain, “I’ll be the counselor that listens…because that’s what they need, or I might be the coach as that person has already done talk therapy, and they are like, I don’t want to talk about it.”

When asked what a successful day on the job looked like, Manzi replied, “A successful day is when I have seen a student and when they leave, they feel slightly better, …or they feel more confident that they are going to be ok.”

The ability and decision to find out if a counselor like Manzi gels with your needs is what Kemmerer attributed and described as, “the number one outcome for people to get better in counseling,” and that a student “feel[s] like the person understood them.” Kemmerer later added that students, “Can say hey, I met with John Doe, didn’t go very well, I’d like to meet with a new counselor.”

“I think what students will find is that there are a variety of approaches out there, but I always encourage, give it a try, find someone who fits,” said Kemmerer.

Manzi, who originally had plans to become a nurse, ended up pursuing a master’s in social work due to her time working under grants at MWCC. “I have always known that I wanted to go into a helping position,” said Manzi. “I am an individual who is very much doing what I love to do for work,” she explained.

The origins behind the MWCC and Christie Campus partnership started like most things, with a grant from the government, explained Manzi. She continued, “I could have spent the money on a really expensive speaker, but that to me would have been a timed program that wasn’t going to keep lasting, but the service was going to last.”

As the “Be well at the Mount” program is soon approaching its nearly 7-week anniversary, Manzi wrote in a follow-up email that even though the response to the program has been positive, currently, not many students are using the services. She further elaborated, “I think over time as everyone gets more familiar with it the usage will increase,” and how that as “semester stressors” grow that there will be an accompanying expectation of usage.