“If you make a student wait four weeks to get treatment for depression, you will ruin their whole semester.”
“Very often for students with anxiety, you can reach a level of improvement in five to seven weeks,” Sherry Benton said about the online counseling tool TAO Connect.
Emily Wunderlich | The Crow’s Nest
By Carrie Pinkard
Thinking about going to therapy may conjure up images from movies of brown leather futons and ink blots.
Bearing your soul to a stranger in a room with a ficus and a framed diploma on the wall might feel intimidating. Fortunately, the university’s Wellness Center has another option for students: Therapy Assistance Online, also known as TAO Connect.
USF St. Petersburg is one of over 150 campuses to use the online counseling service that was founded in 2015 by Dr. Sherry Benton.
Benton was the director of counseling services at the University of Florida for six years when she started noticing a trend: There were too many students for the number of counselors.
She said students who showed up at the counseling center were being turned away, some having to wait weeks to get an appointment.
“If you make a student wait four weeks to get treatment for depression, you will ruin their whole semester,” Benton said.
To combat this issue, Benton, who had a 30-year career in psychology but no business experience, launched her own company, TAO Connect.
Any student with a USF email can log in to the service through the Wellness Center website. Once you do, you’ll be directed to take a screening test that will assess your mental health needs.
The results of the screening will provide recommendations on which of the seven TAO Pathways might benefit you. The pathways include “Improving your Mood,” which focuses on depression, “Calming your Worry,” which focuses on anxiety, and “Interpersonal Relationships and Communication.”
The pathways are broken up into modules and sessions. Each module takes 1 to 2 hours to complete, while each session takes 10 to 15 minutes.
For those not wanting to commit to a full pathway, there is also a mindfulness library where you can watch and listen to individual videos designed to help you “focus on the present moment, rather than ruminating on the past or worrying about the future.”
Benton said how quickly students see mental health improvement from using TAO depends on their individual needs and how often they use it.
“Very often for students with anxiety, you can reach a level of improvement in five to seven weeks,” she said.
Benton said TAO isn’t designed to replace traditional talk therapy. Rather, it’s a system designed to help those students who could benefit from self-help or minimal support.
She said not everyone’s needs conform to the traditional 50-minute, in-person counseling session.
“If everyone went to the emergency room and got an hour with the surgeon, that would be crazy,” Benton said. “Everyone who comes in to the counseling center gets 50-minute sessions. But actually, some people could make just as much progress and just as much improvement with a 10-15 minute session online.”
