STUDENT COUNSELING SERVICES (SCS)

Topics range from Mental Health to Self-help. Email scs@kaust.edu.sa to reserve and collect your book.

Are you concerned about a student's mental health? Email scs@kaust.edu.sa to make a referral.

The role of Student Counseling Services (SCS) is to help graduate students enhance their academic and personal well-being. SCS promotes holistic well-being by providing free prevention, intervention, and psycho-educational services to all KAUST students and their spouses. These include confidential individual and marital counseling, psychological assessments, educational workshops, community outreach programs, crisis support, and referral services. In addition, SCS offers consultation and education to faculty and staff to assist them in addressing the psychological needs of the graduate student community.

Counseling involves a professional relationship between a qualified psychologist and their client. This therapeutic alliance provides a safe, nonjudgmental space for clients to share their concerns, increase self-awareness, and promotes clients’ mental health and wellbeing. Your psychologist will work with you to understand the unique concerns that brought you to counseling. This will involve enquiring about your current and past life experiences, the coping strategies and self-care skills you have, your goals for counseling, and other questions relevant to your situation. Counseling sessions are confidential, and your psychologist will discuss this with you in the first session. At the end of the first session, you and your psychologist will discuss how you want to ‘take things forward’. If you decide to continue with counseling, your psychologist will work with you to identify appropriate ways to achieve your goals for counseling.

All services offered by SCS are strictly confidential. Protecting privacy for counseling services is essential to the professional code of ethics in all mental health professions. Moreover, KAUST is committed to safeguarding students’ records. SCS staff typically will not release any information regarding clients, or the services they receive, to anyone outside the SCS program without the client's written permission. Your psychologist will discuss SCS’s policies and practices about confidentiality and record keeping with you at the time of your first appointment.