Clinical Concerns & Ulifeline.org

Ulifeline

Click here to access the Illinois Wesleyan site at Ulifeline.org

To leverage the anonymity of the Internet and its popularity among young adults, the Jed Foundation has created Ulifeline.org, a Web-based resource that will provide students with a nonthreatening and supportive link to their respective college's mental health center as well as important mental health information.

Students are able to download information about various mental illnesses, ask questions, make appointments, and seek help anonymously via the Internet, a medium they are comfortable using.

This user-friendly site is designed as a template that can be customized to the needs of any college or university to reflect the programs and policies of its mental health center. The Ulifeline Web site provides universities with a free resource for bringing existing mental health services to their student population and complements rather than replaces the existing mental health information students now receive.

Current services offered through Ulifeline.org are:

  • Go Ask Alice! receives about 1,500 questions weekly from college and high school students, parents, teachers, older adults, and others. A customized version of Go Ask Alice! is included on Ulifeline.org allowing students from many universities to have virtually any mental health questions answered 24 hours a day. After students' questions are answered, they may still want further information about a mental health subject. This is why we included the InteliHealth partnership.
  • A mental health and drug information library is available to students through the InteliHealth resource, which features the consumer health information of Harvard Medical School. More than 150 top healthcare organizations contribute to the breadth of its content, which is reviewed for accuracy by medical professionals.
  • Developed at Duke University, the Duke Diagnostic Psychiatry Screening Program allows the Ulifeline user to be screened for different DSM IV categories. This software provides valuable direction to both students and counselors and links to a professional contact within the university healthcare community. The diagnostic is not meant to take the place of an evaluation by a physician or mental health professional. However, a positive result suggests that the student would benefit from comprehensive mental health screening.