Good morning, afternoon, or evening to you whenever and wherever you might be reading our inaugural BeWell blog! "I don't have time to read," you might be thinking. Fair. Many of you are our industrious WVU Health Sciences students, faculty, and staff. (We see you, family members of any of the above that are checking in just to make sure you know what's new.)
You're right. You are busy! Super busy. So busy, in fact that WVU opened a satellite office of the Carruth Center in the HSC building to meet your specific needs. Say what? Yes. It's true. That's us! BeWell offers the same level of care you have come to expect from Carruth. Confidentially? Yes. Like, you won't tell my Dean that I'm rethinking my life choices and might want to go into underwater basket weaving instead of medicine. No, we won't tell people that.
As an aside, we’ve had the chance to sit down with the leadership teams of each of the HSC schools. They’re all pretty cool people and would most likely listen to your existential crisis. Tell you it's going to be ok. Suggest that maybe you wait to make this big decision until after you've completed a full week of graduate education (totally normal reaction to the panic that sets in when you realize you climbed a proverbial mountain getting into graduate school only to realize there is so much more upward climb to go) and then maybe refer you to see us!
Back to the point...we're here! Myself, psychiatrist Dr. Brian Quigley, psychiatrist Dr. John Campo, program coordinator Maleah King, and of course, Gus the Therapy Dog. As a counselor, my approach is integrative wellness. What's that? Schedule a session and find out!
Take a look around the updated website and see what you think. You'll notice two new buttons that you can click on the home page: Ask Dr. Jen, and Request a Gus Visit. Both are pretty self-explanatory, but let me really encourage you to use both. While I know the vast majority will be Gus requests initially because he is so clearly the cuddlier option, I look forward to seeing your mental health questions. It's a way to ask a mental health professional all the things you want to know without any of the risk by doing it anonymously knowing I won't be responding to you specifically. Instead you might notice a fragment of your question in my next blog post as I start a series called Tough Truth Tuesdays.
In the meantime...be well, be kind, be giving of your love.