Spring Break
NT Center offers counseling
Juan Guajardo
Issue date: 9/18/07 Section: NEWS
In the wake of 21-year-old NT student Lorena Sandoval's strangulation death last Friday, NT President Gretchen Bataille reminded students that the Counseling and Testing Center is ready to help and can provide grief counseling as well as help with problematic relationships.
Sandoval's boyfriend, Sean Kresse, was charged with murder after an autopsy showed Sandoval died of strangulation. Kresse was taken to Denton County Jail with bail set at $200,000.
"This is an important issue and it's always so sad when something like this comes up and brings this to our attention again," said Timothy Lane, counseling and testing services associate director. "It gets very sad. We want the students to be all very aware because nobody deserves this kind of relationship."
NT offers a maximum of eight free counseling sessions per academic year for students needing individual help, but also for couples facing relationship problems as long as the problem remains in the early stages, Lane said.
Lane, who is also a psychologist, said that the counseling center is well prepared to provide grief counseling as well. Eight senior staff psychologists and four advanced doctoral students have the experience to help students cope with deaths of loved ones.
"One thing we like to do as counselors is to help people use their support system that they have," he said. "When we have had other students die, we would encourage people to talk with other peers or other people affected by this death so that they can support each other. It would be a much more normal community that supports each other in a very difficult time."
Lane said grief counseling would be directed at students having a very difficult time or an extreme emotional reaction to the idea of how someone died or with how it occurred.
"Sometimes grief counseling is about helping a person deal with the immediate crisis until they reach more of a state of a normal grief," Lane said. "Generally, normal grief doesn't need counseling."
Sandoval's boyfriend, Sean Kresse, was charged with murder after an autopsy showed Sandoval died of strangulation. Kresse was taken to Denton County Jail with bail set at $200,000.
"This is an important issue and it's always so sad when something like this comes up and brings this to our attention again," said Timothy Lane, counseling and testing services associate director. "It gets very sad. We want the students to be all very aware because nobody deserves this kind of relationship."
NT offers a maximum of eight free counseling sessions per academic year for students needing individual help, but also for couples facing relationship problems as long as the problem remains in the early stages, Lane said.
Lane, who is also a psychologist, said that the counseling center is well prepared to provide grief counseling as well. Eight senior staff psychologists and four advanced doctoral students have the experience to help students cope with deaths of loved ones.
"One thing we like to do as counselors is to help people use their support system that they have," he said. "When we have had other students die, we would encourage people to talk with other peers or other people affected by this death so that they can support each other. It would be a much more normal community that supports each other in a very difficult time."
Lane said grief counseling would be directed at students having a very difficult time or an extreme emotional reaction to the idea of how someone died or with how it occurred.
"Sometimes grief counseling is about helping a person deal with the immediate crisis until they reach more of a state of a normal grief," Lane said. "Generally, normal grief doesn't need counseling."
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