If you feel in danger of becoming swamped by personal issues that are interfering with your studies and you are looking for help with this, or you have other questions about your well-being or mental health and you want to know the right place to ask them, then the student psychologists can help you to get the help you need.
Quick Referral
We use a Quick Referral system in which you have a short, 15 minute consultation with a student psychologist, during which you assess your situation and formulate your most important request for help. The student psychologist can give you advice and then refer you to the appropriate help within or outside the university.
After the Quick Referral appointment, there are several options:
- Referral to a course given by the student psychologists.
- Referral for a more elaborate intake meeting with a student psychologist to gain more insight into your problem and/or to start an individual, short-term counseling program (max. five appointments including the intake meeting) (see below).
- Referral to your general practitioner or an external psychologist/psychiatrist or mental health specialist, when your symptoms do not fall within the scope of the student psychologist or require more expertise or time (see below).
- Referral to a different department within TU/e, like the academic advisor or a student counselor
- One-off advice or answer to your question about mental wellbeing.
How to get the most from your appointment
- Take time to carefully answer the questions that are asked when you make the appointment.
- Describe your main problem or question clearly and specifically.
- Don’t be late for your appointment.
*This online appointment tool has been set up with great care by TU/e and the system complies with all the legal obligations of the privacy law. The data are only used as input for the appointments.
Intake meeting with the student psychologist
During the Quick Referral, you may be referred to an intake meeting with the student psychologist. This intake meeting lasts 45 minutes and is intended for the student psychologist to get to know you as well as possible and to gain a clear picture of your problems and request for help. At the end of the meeting, a plan will be drawn up for the following appointments (maximum of four).
The student psychologist can help with the following problems:
- Feeling down
- Anxiety issues, like fear of failure, social anxiety, worrying, fear of public speaking
- Problems related to ASD or AD(H)D
- Problems related to being a highly gifted student
- Insecurity or low self-esteem
- Problems with assertiveness
- (Study-related) stress and burn-out problems
- Personal circumstances (such as a death or dealing with an illness or handicap)
When referral is the best course of action
Depending on the nature and severity of your problems, the student psychologist may need to refer you to another care provider or mental health specialist. This may be the case for:
- Addiction problems
- Psychiatric disorders such as OCD, fobia, eating disorder, personality disorder
- Urgent and/or very serious health concerns, such as: extended periods of feeling sad or unhappy, recurrent thoughts of suicide, staying in bed all day, dissociation with reality or feeling too afraid to leave the house to go outside
- Self-harm/automutilation
- Recurrent problems that you have received help for previously
- A request for further psychological examination or to make a diagnosis, for example AD(H)D, depression, ASD, or to take an intelligence test.
The student psychologists are well informed about local organizations and practices, and can help you look around if a referral is necessary. However, you will have to see your general practitioner to get a referral letter. If you feel that you need more psychological help than the student psychologists can offer, we advise you to contact your general practitioner directly.
For urgent help
See below for what you can do if your problems are so serious that you really cannot wait for a regular appointment.
- You can contact your general practitioner (GP) at any time. If your GP is not available at the weekend, you can call the out-of-hours GP service with which your GP works.
- In the event of an emergency you can always call 112. You can call even if you are not sure that it is an emergency. The call handler will assess the situation. If you are experiencing suicidal thoughts, you can contact 113 by calling 0800-0113.
Contact a student psychologist
Are you wondering if your problem is suitable for the student psychologist? Would you like more information about the courses that we offer? Do you feel that your problems are so serious that you cannot wait until your appointment? Or do you have any other questions? Please feel free to contact us at any time via student.psychologists@tue.nl. We will help you to examine the possibilities.
If you are a PhD student or EngD trainee, you can make an appointment with the PhD-EngD psychologist.