While Kansas State has its own mental health services, students can also seek help outside of campus. Pawnee Mental Health and Katie’s Way are two off-campus resources students can take advantage of. Both offer counseling and therapy services.
1. Katie’s Way
This resource offers similar help, just without a crisis center. Staff supplies outpatient mental health services, diagnostic assessments, transcranial magnetic stimulation, family and group therapy, individual therapy, psychological testing and medication consultation, assessment and treatment.
Transcranial magnetic stimulation, or TMS, is a procedure that uses magnetic fields to stimulate nerve cells in the brain to improve symptoms of depression. It’s typically used when other depression treatments are not effective.
2. Pawnee Mental Health
Pawnee supplies a few services: therapy, substance treatment services and medical services. Per the company website, Pawnee helps clients “solve current problems and change unhelpful thinking and behavior [and] help you ‘reframe’ your thinking and provide you with valuable tools to cope with life’s obstacles.”
Pawnee has two locations in Manhattan: one on Claflin Road and one on Houston Street. They also have a new Crisis Stabilization Center which opened in November.
The facility provides services for individuals in a crisis that allow them to walk in without a doctor’s referral and get the help they need. The center houses 11 beds.
“It’s kind of a continuum of care between going to see a therapist on a regular basis or ending up in a state mental hospital,” Deanna Hall, Pawnee marketing manager, said. “We’re trying to be a safety net for people so they don’t have further issues that require hospitalization.”
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Taking care of mental health is important in college.
“The longer I’ve been in college, the more I’ve realized how important it is to take care of your mental health,” Luke Grieger, senior in horticulture, said. “It’s definitely not the most talked-about thing, but I think if more people are comfortable talking about, the better lives people can have.”
John Winter, junior in civil engineering, said the same.
“For me, personally, I haven’t gone and gotten help,” Winter said. “But I know some people who have done that, and it seems like a great thing. It’s definitely good that people are getting help and not ignoring the problems.”
Hall said she has witnessed students actively seeking treatment more often.
“I think what we are seeing here is that with each generation coming up,” Hall said. “Each one is a bit more open to the idea of making sure that they are mentally healthy as well as physically healthy. The stigma kind of goes away when people realize that this is just a part of being a whole person.”
