The Center for Collegiate Mental Health (CCMH) is the largest practice-research- network of its kind in the world, focusing on the research of college student mental health. More details about CCMH history and our mission is described here in a prior blog. This particular blog zooms in to focus on the benefits of CCMH membership, as membership with CCMH gives a counseling center access to various tools and resources. Whether you are a current member, or someone interested in membership, this blog is designed to review each of the membership tools/benefits available and expand a bit to share how members use them in their centers.
CCAPS 34 / CCAPS 62
The Counseling Center Assessment of Psychological Symptoms (CCAPS) is the most widely used CCMH instrument. The CCAPS is a standardized assessment tool (62 or 34) that measures common psychological symptoms (Depression, Generalized Anxiety, Social Anxiety, Academic Distress, Eating Concerns, Family Distress, Frustration/Anger, Substance Abuse) experienced by clients receiving treatment at college counseling centers. Clinicians typically administer the CCAPS-62 at intake and offer the CCAPS-34 at subsequent appointments as a repeated measure to monitor treatment progress. The CCAPS Profile Report offers clinicians feedback related to their client’s response to treatment based on up-to-date national norms of over 388,266 college students receiving treatment. The CCAPS Manual provides a thorough description of the profile report which is essential for clinician training. If you are a member, you can access the CCAPS Manual within your EMR or in the Member Information Folder on the CCMH Website. If you are not a member and want to learn more, please reach out to CCMH to request a copy to review.
The CCAPS 34 and CCAPS 62 are integrated within several electronic medical record (EMR) systems: Medicat, Point N Click, PyraMed and Titanium. For centers that do not use an EMR or use an EMR that does not include the CCAPS, CCMH offers a web-based scoring platform called the CCAPS-Web. Centers may administer the CCAPS 34 or CCAPS 62 to clients via pen/paper and then clinicians manually enter scores in the web to generate the client profile report which can be downloaded as a PDF to attach to your EMR/client chart. The CCAPS-Web neither collects nor retains any protected health information (PHI) but rather assigns a CCAPS-ID to each report which can be locally recorded with a client’s identity.
Pre-Post and Initial Distress Reports
CCMH currently offers two different CCAPS national comparison reports. These reports are available to all members, regardless of your EMR. The Initial Distress report allows centers to compare their clients baseline CCAPS scores to the national sample. Depending on the administration style of the CCAPS at your center, this report compares students’ CCAPS 62 or 34 scores at their first session compared to the 2019-2021 national sample of 274,364 clients. The Pre-Post report is designed to describe how clients at your center change compared to the national sample. Similar to the Initial Distress report, the Pre-Post report will vary based on the version(s) of the CCAPS used at your center. The Pre-Post report allows for you to review clients who began services above or below the high cut, and specify the minimum dosage of treatment (clients with at least 2 CCAPS, etc.) Your centers local responses, based on your selected criteria are then compared to our nation sample to reflect how your clients change compared to clients across the country.
Both of these reports are often used in annual reports to convey center impact as well as help advocate and highlight areas where a center could benefit from more training/resources. Titanium customers can access the reports directly from Titanium, and members who use other EMR’s can run the reports from the CCAPS-Web (our web-based scoring platform).
Standardized Data Set
The Standardized Data Set (SDS) is a set of standardized questions initially developed by counseling centers staff. Over the years, CCMH has updated questions as terminology and culture evolves. It is best to reference the SDS Manual on our website to make sure you are reviewing the most current version available. The SDS has a few main components:
- Client demographic/mental health history questions that are often used during intake
- Case Closure Form which is completed by clinicians to indicate why treatment ended
- Clinician Index of Client Concerns (CLICC) which allows clinicians to indicate clients’ presenting concerns when they enter treatment
The SDS Manual is available on the CCMH website and all members are welcome to adopt the questions to compare your local data to the national data in our annual report. Depending on your EMR, the standardized form may be integrated and automatically updated from year to year, or you may need to refer to the SDS Manual to manually add or modify the questions/responses that you would like to ask your clients.
CCAPS-Screen
The CCAPS-Screen is a mental health screening tool designed for use with the general student body at your institution which provides students with easily understood feedback about their levels of distress. With only 36 questions derived from the CCAPS 62, the CCAPS-Screen only takes a few minutes for students to complete and a simple feedback report is instantly provided back to the student. The report is designed to be straightforward for anyone to review, which allows a student to self-screen or an athletic trainer to screen an athlete. This can be a wonderful resource to add to your counseling center website for students to anonymously assess themselves. Additionally, many counseling centers have had success administering the CCAPS-Screen to athletes as a part of their pre-participation screenings which has fostered wonderful relationships between counseling centers and athletic departments. Institutions have also used the CCAPS-Screen on mental health screening days, during wellness initiatives, or collaborated with other units at the university to screen specific groups of students.
The CCAPS-Screen is not embedded within an EMR. It is managed, scored, and stored in the CCAPS-Web (CCMH’s CCAPS scoring website), and it does not collect or retain any personal health information. All CCMH members have access to the CCAPS-Screen! Additionally, departments at any college or university who want to use the CCAPS-Screen can register for a Non-Clinical CCMH Membership which gives them their own access to the CCAPS-Screen. This is a popular option for athletic departments that have the capacity to screen athletes independently from the counseling center.
Clinical Load Index
The Clinical Load Index (CLI) is a metric developed by CCMH to illustrate the landscape of current staffing levels in order to encourage transparency and clarity about institutional funding and staffing decisions via a reliable and comparable staffing metric. An individual CLI score can be thought of as “clients per standardized counselor” (per year) or the “standardized caseload” of the counseling center. As a result, the CLI helps to shift the question that institutions should be asking from, “How many staff should we have?” to “What services do we want to provide to our students?” or "What experiences do we want students to have when they seek counseling services?”
Each year, CCMH members share their clinical capacity (supply) and utilization (demand) with CCMH, and we create a national distribution. Members may request CLI Peer Comparison Reports to compare their CLI to their chosen peers which can be used as an advocacy tool with administration. CCMH also creates customized summary reports for member centers to show how their CLI has shifted from year-to-year, reflecting changes in both staffing and students served.
Data Contribution
As a CCMH member, every center contributes to our research mission by providing center level/CLI information that informs our Annual Report. Nearly 200 CCMH members opt to contribute client level data (CCAPS and SDS) to CCMH, which allows us to continually update national norms for the CCAPS Profile Report and to create our Annual Reports that report CCAPS and SDS trends from the prior year. Members must obtain IRB approval from their local institution in order to share de-identified client data to CCMH. Without data contribution, CCMH would not exist! We are immensely grateful to centers who contribute to our research mission. At this time, Titanium Schedule is the only EMR with the technology infrastructure to send data in a standardized format to CCMH, however CCMH is actively exploring opportunities with our other vendor partners. In our Member Information Folder, we provide sample protocols and step by step instructions to submit an IRB application. Though client-level data contribution is optional and requires IRB approval, all CCMH members contribute center-level data during registration/renewal that allows CCMH to conduct research on center level variables, such as the CLI.
CCMH publishes an Annual Report every January that provides updates using client, clinician, and center-level data.
Data Access
All of the data contributed to CCMH is available to CCMH members to use for research! Members can submit a Data Request application and use our data for research purposes for free. Non-members are also welcomed to submit requests and are charged a fee.
Support Network
As a member of CCMH, you are tied into a network of 750+ college counseling centers with access to our membership listserv. Regardless of your role in the center, you are welcome to join our listserv to receive updates from CCMH, and network/connect with other members in the community. Additionally, you are invited to our office hours events that are a great way to connect with CCMH and other counseling center staff.
Continuing Education
CCMH provides up to date education to members and the community. We are proud to offer CEU events twice a year, free of cost. These CEU events are hosted by PESI and sponsored by CCMH. Whether you are a member or not, we invite you to participate. Please subscribe to our newsletter for announcements and registration.
We value our members and strive to continue providing an array of tools and resources to help counseling centers thrive. Please reach out to CCMH at [email protected] with any questions.