Psychological counselling
In 2020:
- 43 student service organisations – the Studierendenwerke (or STWs) – had psychological counselling services available
- the psychological counselling centres of the student service organisations counted about 105,700 counselling contacts
- nearly 28,000 students used individual counselling sessions and about 5,500 students used the predominantly digital group services offered by the psychological counselling centres of the Studierendenwerke.
- of the 43 Studierendenwerke with psychological counselling services in 2020, all Studierendenwerke offered on-site counselling, at least temporarily, as well as telephone counselling
- 32 student service organisations also offer online counselling via video.
- 18 student service organisations offered online counselling via e-mail/chat.
Social Counselling
In 2020:
- 48 student service organisations – the Studierendenwerke (or STWs) – had a social counselling service at their disposal
- the social counselling centres of the STWs counted about 78,400 individual consultations
- just under 4,600 people seeking advice took advantage of group counselling services offered by the social counselling centres
- of the 48 Studierendenwerke offering social and/or student finance counselling, all Studierendenwerke offered on-site counselling, at least temporarily, as well as telephone counselling in 2020
- At 22 locations, social or student finance counselling was conducted as online counselling via video.
- online counselling via e-mail/chat was offered at 38 locations
Within the scope of their legal responsibilities for the social and health support of students, the student service organisations have various counselling services in their range of services, with which they complement the services offered by the universities: psychological counselling, social counseling, and counselling for students with disabilities and chronic illnesses. They support students in their individual life or study situation and thus make a significant contribution to ensuring equal opportunities as well as successful studies. In order to ensure low-threshold access to the counselling services even under pandemic conditions, the Studierendenwerke digitised and expanded their service formats in 2020: Students could take advantage of the counselling services as on-site counselling, telephone counselling, video counselling, and e-mail or chat counselling.
