NSU Opens 16-Hour Weekly Sliding-Scale Counseling Clinic in Broken Arrow

For health systems, NSU's Community Counseling Clinic is a case study in deploying graduate-level behavioral health trainees to close outpatient access gaps. The clinic targets cost, waitlist, transportation, stigma, and cultural barriers with a 16-hour weekly schedule that includes evening blocks for working adults and adolescents. Its supervised training model offers a lower-cost referral option while strengthening the future mental health workforce.

Northeastern State University has opened the Community Counseling Clinic at its Broken Arrow campus, a new training-based mental health service that accepts clients ages 13 and older and offers therapy on a sliding scale. Local television station KTUL reported the launch on July 28, 2026, and the Cherokee Phoenix, a publication serving the Cherokee Nation, followed with coverage the next day. The clinic's stated mission is to close gaps in mental health access in the Broken Arrow area, and its leadership is unusually direct about the barriers. Dr. Cheri Mays, the clinic's director, attributed the access problem to high costs, limited insurance coverage, long waitlists, transportation barriers, stigma, cultural barriers, and limited availability. The clinic is designed to respond with a strategic location, flexible scheduling, and culturally competent care models rather than simply adding another fee-for-service practice to the market.

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Northeastern State University has opened the Community Counseling Clinic at its Broken Arrow campus, a new training-based mental health service that accepts clients ages 13 and older and offers therapy on a sliding scale.

In practice, the clinic operates four days a week in two time blocks: Monday and Wednesday from noon to 4 p.m., and Tuesday and Thursday from 4 p.m. to 8 p.m., for a total of 16 weekly service hours. The afternoon/evening split is operationally important because it extends access to working adults and school-age teenagers who might otherwise be unable to attend a traditional 9-to-5 clinic. The clinical scope includes depression, anxiety, trauma, relationship issues, and substance use disorders. Counselors-in-training from NSU's CACREP-accredited counseling program deliver the therapy under the supervision of licensed professionals, a structure that both lowers the cost of care and provides required clinical hours for graduate students. President Rodney Hanley framed the clinic as "an investment in healthier communities today and a stronger behavioral health workforce for the future."

The workforce component is perhaps the most consequential long-term aspect. CACREP accreditation is a recognized quality standard for counselor education, and embedding students in a community clinic creates a pipeline of clinicians who have treated real clients before graduation. For a state that has historically struggled with shortages of behavioral health providers, especially outside major metros, this model provides a low-cost recruitment and retention mechanism for local mental health employers. It also gives NSU a distinct graduate-education asset: students can complete clinical hours without the university having to arrange external placements, and community members receive supervised care that may be more affordable than established practices.

From a health system perspective, the clinic operates as a community access point rather than a full-service community mental health center. It does not advertise crisis services, and its limited 16-hour weekly schedule means it is most useful for routine outpatient counseling, not emergency or intensive care. Yet that is precisely where many access gaps are most acute: waitlists for outpatient therapy can stretch for weeks or months, and sliding-scale programs are largely absent in suburban areas where the uninsured and underinsured are less visible. By accepting clients as young as 13, the clinic also intercepts adolescent mental health needs before they escalate into school disruptions or emergency department utilization.