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Caring for the Whole Student

TCU's Counseling & Mental Health Center supports students in innovative ways.

By TCU Magazine

August 12^th, 2021

by Trisha Spence

Diane Taing could imagine herself as a physician. When she visited a hospital, she got chills from watching doctors and nurses at work.

She thought about mixing her artistic talent and perfectionism into a career as a plastic surgeon.

Taing graduated from a Fort Worth-area high school in the top 10 percent of her class. She enrolled at TCU as a biochemistry major. All of the pieces were in place.

But just before she moved to campus, a co-worker sexually assaulted her.

Taing’s excitement about the future, self-confidence and determination vanished. After her first semester at TCU, her GPA was 1.4.

“It was really hard for me to get my mind focused on academics because a part of me was so deeply hurt,” she said.

She tried confiding in friends, but they treated her like she was too much to handle, she said; they didn’t understand her. But one friend told her about TCU’s Counseling & Mental Health Center.

Taing called the center and requested an appointment. A counselor helped her find a long-term therapist who could meet her needs. She joined a meditation group led by a licensed professional counselor. She learned coping mechanisms to help with anxiety, post-traumatic stress disorder and insomnia.

Like all TCU students, Taing has access to ample resources intended to support integrated mental health. Whether in one-on-one talk therapy, addiction recovery groups or Dungeons & Dragons game nights, students can find a place to belong and feel understood. Connection culture, after all, extends well beyond simple social interactions.

Safety Network

Eric Wood, director of the Counseling & Mental Health Center, and his team are reaching past talk therapy to help students navigate a variety of obstacles to optimal mental health. Through innovative and collaborative approaches to counseling, the university helps students thrive during a complex time in their lives.

When Covid-19 turned the university into a ghost town, Wood’s work didn’t stop. In fall 2020, his center experienced a 48 percent increase in students seeking services.

Most current students were born after 1995 and belong to Generation Z, a group that reports chronic stress. Research points to factors including gun violence, sexual harassment, bullying, debt and divisive politics. In 2020, students also had to traverse a global pandemic and social unrest while living on their own for the first time and deciding what to do with the rest of their lives.

Wood’s holistic approach to mental health care involves colleagues across campus and partners in the community. Together they weave a multifaceted safety net for students.

An anchor for that net came from a three-year, $300,000 grant from the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration. Wood used the funds to expand his Comprehensive Collaborative Care Model. The model relies on a range of people who contribute to the overall well-being of students, like the dean of students, pastoral care professionals and student success coaches.

Eric Wood, director of TCU’s Counseling and Mental Health Center, taps community members and campus colleagues in his collaborative approach to providing services for students. Photo by Joyce Marshall

The grant allowed Wood to form a crisis and triage response team. Crisis care is one of the most significant sources of staff burnout, Wood said. The team helps students experiencing an urgent mental health crisis such as considering suicide or self-harm, feeling overwhelmed by trauma or seeing or hearing things that other people do not.

A team dedicated to crisis intervention frees other counselors for more routine services like individual and group therapy, substance use recovery, and consultations with faculty and staff.

Stress weighs on students, many of whom are part of Generation Z. Research points to factors including gun violence, sexual harassment, bullying, debt and divisive politics. Photo of Cale Perry by Joyce Marshall

Help is Everywhere

During Taing’s sophomore year, another person sexually assaulted her. She hit rock bottom and started self-harming.

“I was feeling really suicidal,” she said. Antidepressants weren’t helping — one made her faint repeatedly. “I felt hopeless.”

Unresolved hurts surrounding her parents’ divorce echoed through Taing’s head. She said she felt pressure to be the perfect child for parents who had escaped genocide in Cambodia.

In a depressive spiral, Taing called the 24/7 counseling help line.

There, she found the assistance she needed.

By her junior year, Taing, now a philosophy major, regained her medical school ambitions. She joined a depression and anxiety group led by Wood. She helped establish the Journey to Healing group to support survivors of sexual assault and abusive relationships.

“Being able to share some of those deep, dark pains with people really opens portals and doorways to a higher level of consciousness for yourself and helps foster deeper love for yourself and others,” she said. “Finding a group of people that can hear and witness you talk about your struggles and then come with support and validation and care — it’s a different kind of therapy.”

Leading by Example

Kendall Drummond struggled with substance use in high school.

“The second I took my first drink, it was off,” she said. “I could never seem to regulate that, and I would get myself into these adverse situations.”

A period of sobriety that stretched into college soon evaporated, and Drummond turned back to alcohol.

“The allure, the obsession — because I wasn’t in any program — came back,” she said.

Kendall Drummond struggled with substance abuse before seeking counseling. Now she is involved in several peer support communities and is the wellness director of her sorority, Zeta Tau Alpha. Photo by Joyce Marshall

One thought about her potential future festered in her mind: “I can never pick my kids up from soccer practice because there’s no way I would never not be this drunk.”

Drummond was able to stay sober for two months after her relapse, but stress was mounting; she was finding life unmanageable.

A counselor helped Drummond, now a senior psychology major, find a therapist to unpack the trauma at the core of her addiction. The center connected her with academic services, where she learned how to study better and reduce stress.

Reaching out “changed my trajectory completely,” Drummond said. “All of that was sparked by the fact that I went into the counseling center one time.”

All of the Counseling & Mental Health Center’s services are included in tuition and fees.

In addition to counseling, students can access more than 20 peer support groups Wood helped launch at TCU. Those include Alphabet Soup, an LGBTQIA+ community; Nourish, a group focused on improving body image and food habits; Renew, a place for depression and anxiety support and encouragement; and the Ripple Effect, for students with loved ones struggling with addiction.

Drummond joined several peer support communities, including TCU’s Collegiate Recovery Community, which she learned about from a sober student at a party. The communities are confidential and anonymous, and no one documents attendance.

Students in peer groups stay connected through chat threads. They send funny memes, celebrate milestones and invite each other to lunch. If someone just needs another person to talk to? “Within two seconds someone will be blowing up your phone,” Drummond said. “It’s amazing. It’s a lifeline.”

That’s the groups’ intent, Wood said. “The whole focus is community-building.”

He recently led a virtual training on peer support groups to demonstrate to university counseling professionals how the concept works. Representatives from more than 70 schools signed up. “We’re getting recognized as one of the leaders of college mental health,” Wood said.

The accountability that comes from group peers has been paramount, Drummond said. “That’s the safety net. That’s how I stayed sober. That’s how I got to class. I had my peers who genuinely cared and heard what I was going through.”

Kendall Drummond said reaching out for help “changed my trajectory completely.” Photo by Joyce Marshall

Counseling and Mental Health Center offers many resources for students navigating college’s complexities. From equine therapy to a gaming support group, TCU tends to students’ mental health in innovative ways. Photo of Gracie Harris by Joyce Marshall

Students Helping Students

Austen McLean knows a thing or two about maintaining a character. She’s an enthusiast of Dungeons & Dragons, a tabletop role-playing game. The senior women and gender studies major created a 2,000-word backstory for her newest character, a half-orc blacksmith barbarian.

But in real life, she struggled to maintain control of her original character — herself.

“I was pretending like I was peachy keen,” she said, “even though I was dying inside.”

McLean’s parents had divorced, and her father had a new wife and a new life. When she stayed with him, she was a shape-shifter who pretended to be a happy daughter.

At college, without having to switch roles to placate family members, McLean was unspooling the persona she had wound around herself.

After visiting her father at his new home, McLean broke down in an airport restroom. “I was emotionally and mentally tired. I was so defeated,” she said. “All of the emotion that I had been holding back that entire week had just come out.”

McLean leaned into the Supportive Gaming Community, which was just taking shape at TCU, and began to get therapy.

Through the community, students participate in role-playing games such as Dungeons & Dragons.

“When I got to the Supportive Gaming Community, I was in this place of a lot more positivity,” McLean said. “Just being around an environment that was dedicated to mental health really helped me.

“I got to a place where I was comfortable seeking therapy and getting my whole situation fixed.”

In the weekly game sessions, McLean tried on different personalities. First she was Sage Blackwell, a nerdy necromancer wallflower. In another game she was an ethereal and assertive character named Bryer.

“D&D, for me, is such an outlet of self-exploration,” McLean said.

Bryer, for example, let McLean be a more confident version of herself, unafraid of taking up space in a room.

“It’s a way for me to practice being myself,” she said. The group “is creating a safe environment where everybody feels like a member of a community.”

Dawson Holder, a junior entertainment law and entrepreneurship major, said he looks forward to weekly game sessions. “D&D is definitely something that has helped me connect with others.”

Through peer support communities, students see they are not alone and connect with people with similar interests and struggles. Photo of Cale Perry and Anna Norman by Carolyn Cruz

“I had a lot to unpack, and I was not doing as well mental healthwise,” he said. “I had so many friends, but I just felt they reached the end of where they could help me.”

The high achiever from Flower Mound, Texas, said he wasn’t feeling like himself; instead he felt lethargic, and his faith was shifting.

One day while perusing social media, Holder saw a post about the Counseling & Mental Health Center.

He called for a consultation. Wood’s model came alive, connecting Holder to a counselor and to university chaplain Todd Boling. Holder also discovered groups like the gaming community and Alphabet Soup.

“People who may feel like outsiders within other facets of the TCU community find a home within each other,” McLean said.

“My time playing D&D was like my island of serenity in a time when a lot of stuff was just not so great,” she said. “Being in an environment that was dedicated to mental health really helped me.”

“People who may feel like outsiders within other facets of the TCU community find a home within each other.”

Horse Sense

TCU’s three-year grant from the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration concludes in December. An anonymous donor has stepped up with a gift to foster partnerships with several treatment providers that are bringing their programs, tailored to TCU students, to campus.

Wood is working to secure additional donations and external funding to continue the activities that most resonated with students — including the equine-assisted counseling workshop.

Lesli Figueiredo leads these sessions at Freedom Reigns Counseling in Burleson, Texas, where small groups of students participate in lessons with the horses.

“The horses are such good teachers, and they’re so gentle in the way they teach, but they’re so honest,” Figueiredo said. With the horses, people can connect with the emotions they had been suppressing.

Because horses are prey animals, they are tuned in to indicators that someone is unpredictable. They recognize incongruencies in demeanor, Figueiredo said. “If the horse doesn’t feel comfortable around them for whatever reason, typically because someone’s not regulated or their internal state doesn’t match their external state, then the horse will move away from them and give them that feedback.”

Each session has a theme. The first is about handling oneself like a horse.

TCU senior Hannah Divic interacts with horse Joe during an equine-assisted counseling workshop. Photo by Joyce Marshall

TCU junior Tyler Morris, left, and senior Hannah Divic interact with horses Joe and Kairos during an equine-assisted counseling workshop. Photo by Joyce Marshall

“We talk about how horses get the message behind their emotion; they take action and then they return to grazing,” said Figueiredo, a licensed professional counselor. “It’s a great picture that they can learn through observation of the horse, interaction with the horse and even just feedback from the horse.”

Participants witness how horses return to a baseline state after they’ve addressed their emotions.

“We grow up and learn usually that our painful emotions are bad: We shouldn’t be angry, we shouldn’t be sad, we shouldn’t be depressed,” Figueiredo said. “What the horses show us and teach us is all emotions are OK; it’s when we don’t own the emotion that it’s not OK.”

Lesson two is to live in the present like a horse does.

“They’re always in the present,” Figueiredo said. “They don’t go forward in time and have anxiety based on the future, and they don’t go backwards in time and have depression based on the past. They experience all of their emotions in real time.”

Horses don’t worry about perceived threats, she said. They don’t pace around at night wondering if the trailer is going to pick them up in the morning or what will happen if the trough is empty. They respond in the moment, and when the experience passes, they move on.

Students also learn how to treat themselves like a horse.

Figueiredo said the group works on halting the negative tapes people tend to play in their minds. They talk about how the words they use to describe the horses might also apply to themselves.

“That’s all about self-compassion and kindness,” she said. “Oftentimes we’re our own harshest critic. We say really unkind things to ourselves. So if we wouldn’t say that to the horse, is it OK to say it to yourself?”

TCU junior Tyler Morris works with Joe, one of the horses at Freedom Reigns, during a workshop led by certified equine therapist Lesli Figueiredo. Photo by Joyce Marshall

Dear Student

Lately, I’ve been feeling sad and depressed. … I feel like I’m missing out on so many experiences.

More than 100 students have participated in TCU’s Virtual Letters of Care campaign since its fall 2020 start. Students can request a letter by filling out a form online. The form includes a place to explain what they are going through.

Counseling & Mental Health Center staff then select a student volunteer to respond. Neither student receives the full name or contact information of the person with whom they are corresponding.

Evelyn Mandel ’21, who has written several responses to students, said she includes positive affirmations and supportive messages.

Life has its ups and downs and being sad is part of what makes it genuine. I ask you to close your eyes, take a deep breath, and tell yourself that it’s alright.

Mandel started writing letters during her senior year. She volunteered, expecting to pen one letter. Wood asked her to join an unofficial fleet of letter writers.

“I think it takes a lot of courage to reach out for help,” she said. “People are a bit overwhelmed with school and may be feeling a bit anxious or a bit down. And really, they’re just looking for some words of encouragement and some support.”

Mandel came to TCU from California to major in nursing and be a distance runner for the track & field and cross-country teams. “I understand what it’s like to be feeling a bit overwhelmed,” she said. “I think that making time to help other people is really what is important in life. If I’m so overwhelmed with school and sports that I can’t make time for other people, I kind of need to check myself because it’s not a good place to be.”

Letters of care, she said, combine her passions for writing and caring for people.

“I think this time in our lives — your college years, your late teens, early 20s — is this huge growing phase and this time of self-learning and self-discovery. I think that can be hard no matter what,” Mandel said. “Even though it’s uncomfortable, just have hope that you’re going to become a better person on the other side of it, and you’re going to really discover yourself along the way.”

The letters of care are single touches, not ongoing pen pals, so Mandel doesn’t receive a response or update.

“You can’t always be with everybody everywhere,” she said. “It teaches me to be present and to do what I can when I can.”

Taing has written nine letters of care. She said she ruminates for a week before sending the response. She pores over every line of the student’s request.

Evelyn Mandel has written supportive letters to students who requested them as part of the Virtual Letters of Care campaign. “I understand what it’s like to be feeling a bit overwhelmed,” she said. Photo by Joyce Marshall

“I really try to validate and support everything that they’re going through,” Taing said. “Sometimes mental and physical pain can really cloud us from the strength and resilience that we have.”

In journals from her first year in college, she drew and described herself as living under a visible gray cloud.

Today, the senior is looking forward to applying to medical schools.

“Learning about myself through introspection,” Taing said, “has taught me to step into my own power.”

With the help of all the tools she has gained in counseling, Taing is working to find her worth from within instead of from external sources.

“You are the only person that you are guaranteed to be with for the rest of your life,” she said. “Building that connection to yourself and falling in love with discovering more about yourself and growing is such a liberating feeling.”

Where to Find Help

TCU Counseling & Mental Health Center main office: 817-257-7863

24/7 phone counseling help line: 817-257-SAFE (7233)

In an emergency, call Campus Police: 817-257-7777 or dial 911

© 2026 TCU Magazine

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