Iowa State students who work or have a full day of classes will now be able to access counseling services in the evening.

“Based on demand from students, we have decided to extend our hours,” said Terry Mason, director of Iowa State Counseling Services.

Counseling Services, located in the Student Services Building, will be open from 8 a.m. to 8 p.m., Monday through Thursday, and 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. on Fridays.

“We realized students could not use our service because of work,” Mason said. “Now they can.”

Mason said the new hours will also facilitate group counseling and marital or couple counseling. He said often students had to get counseling without their spouse or partner because of restrictions imposed by the service hours.

“We had numerous requests for couple counseling,” Mason said.

The evening hours will also make group counseling more available to students.

“Group counseling helps people the most in some cases,” Mason said. “We put a person in a group setting with five to eight other students with similar issues, and they often enjoy or get more out of the group than from individual counseling.”

Last year, the center provided 12,882 student contacts through their outreach program and 8,725 counseling sessions, Mason said. He said numbers have increased 22 percent over the last three years.

“Students are realizing that you don’t have to be severely impaired to benefit from counseling,” he said. “We deal with typical college student problems or issues. They don’t have to be psychologically sick to come here.”

Counseling Services provides counseling on an individual or group basis, crisis intervention, substance abuse assessment and career counseling.

It also offers outreach programs to residence halls, fraternities, sororities and student groups on stress management, career exploration, dating issues, dating violence, conflict management and relationship enhancement.

“We take care of things before they take place,” Mason said. “This is as place they can go. It’s a safe place to talk about anything.”