The Employee Counselng Service is available since December 2020 organized by the Semmelweis Health Development Center and the Institute of Behavioural Sciences. Its primary aim is to provide support for university employees in case of life management difficulties, as well as problems related to stress and burnout.
The counseling service provides psychological assistance to university staff and provides support to effectively deal with everyday challenges. University staff members may turn to the counseling service not only with psychological problems that are related to work performance, but with other issues making work difficult. Such problems are for example: the difficulties of handling stress and anxiety; relationship problems; time management issues; difficulties with family members; problems related to grief or sickness ; search for a professional identity; uncertainty and difficulties in decision-making. The Employee Conseling Service also provides help to cope with the emotional consequences of increased workload related to the COVID-19 epidemic and to handle associated stress.
“The existence of the counseling service and the actual need are also shown by the fact that there are colleagues working within the university who also visit our Psychosomatic Outpatient Department, which is open to anyone. They ask for psychological help, there are no mental disorders in their case, so there is no need for psychotherapy and psychiatrist intervention, but they have already developed depressing, stress-related blocks that need to be dealt with. The basic idea of the Employee Advisory Service was formulated along these experiences”, highlighted Dr. György Purebl, Head of the Institute of Behavioural Sciences.
According to the experiences of Dr. György Purebl, there are basically two factors that make people turn to a specialist. One is when the situation starts to become unbearable and there comes a “last straw”. In the other case, they are convinced by the good experiences of a friend or colleague in counseling.
According to Dr. Adrienne Kegye, the purpose of counseling is to enable those who turn to them to look at their own problems, to deal with their own situation, thoughts, emotions and to have a sort of change of their attitude.
Besides individual consultations, the Employee Counseling Service provides group psychology services as well, such as stress handling group services, group services for the prevention of burnout, Mindfulness groups and groups for case discussion. In the latter, psychologically burdensome cases can be discussed, regardless of specialization.
Zsuzsa Borbély
Photo: Attila Kovács – Semmelweis University
Translation: Katalin Illés-Romhányi
