Mental health and wellness go hand in hand

The Counseling Center in conjunction with Asian American Fitness and Wellness held an information event Thursday to teach students about self care.

Three Counseling Center interns — Thomas Carlson, Ntsaisnag Vang and Brandt Nye — hosted the event, which was held in the Multicultural Center in CSU.

Asian American Fitness and Wellness also focuses on mental health. 

“It can affect your sleep and how you function. And if you don’t take care of your mental health, you can become extremely stressed and burnt out to the point where you don’t have energy or motivation. It is important to take care of your mental health to help manage and balance life,”  Vang said.

The Counseling Center is accessible to every student. Students are allotted 10 free sessions per academic year. 

“We are there to help give them a space to learn what’s happening along with teaching them skills to cope with things that are going on. For example, people are extremely anxious and we teach workshops to give them the skills to cope with anxiety or depression, along with other individual things,” Vang continued. “It’s more of like a safe space where people can express themselves again, because it’s confidential and it would not be shared with anyone else unless they chose to do so.”

The step care model, a part of the counseling center’s method for helping students throughout consecutive sessions. 

“So it’s how we function in the counseling center starting by having been coming for roughly 15 to 30 minutes talking about what brought them in and then after that, we start referring them to resources. So working our way up and just trying to hit the bottom ones first,” Vang said.

Depression is also one of the reasons to visit the counseling center. They have a workshop to work on depression which is called Unstuck.

“We do individual counseling, so having people come in talking about what’s making them depressed, sort of working through it, and processing it is also a way the counseling center can help students,” Vang said.

Vice president of Asian American Fitness and Wellness, Phireak Ty, invited the three clinical interns to join the event. Ty explained how he prioritizes mental health.

“Because I’m aviation. We do also talk about mental health. Maintaining mental health for students or anyone in general boosts your motivation if you take care of your mental health. If not, it can disrupt your work and you can’t keep moving,” Ty said.

Ty suggests steps to take regarding self care is to “focus on yourself, and work on taking care of yourself by getting enough sleep and maintaining diet.”

An attendant of the event, electrical engineering major Alex Vang, shared some insights for attending the event.

“I think mental health is very important in general. And I think it’s always good to go out to learn more about mental health to educate myself and learn about myself and to be a good support system to other people who might be having mental health challenges,” Alex Vang stated.

According to Alex Vang, the event, “reinforced what I already know. And it was actually a good reminder when they were talking about self-care. To take care of myself and its okay to say no.”

The event featured a presentation on a model for students that emphasized mental health: The Self-Care Wheel.

“I think what gave me clarity is when they were talking about like the spiritual part of self-care. I’ve always thought about spirituality as religion. It doesn’t always have to be that. Them expanding on the definition has really allowed me to have that realization that, I do have a spiritual health that may not be traditional or conventional of what people think. I like to make sure I’m connected to the people that I love and be close with my family and friends,” Alex Vang said.

Write to Biruk Mengesha at biruk.mengesha@mnsu.edu