Men­tal Health Events

Ella Meyer 

Staff Writer 

Mishawaka – Be­ing a col­lege stu­dent is stress­ful, and if you feel that way you are not alone. Thank­fully, Bethel has good op­por­tu­ni­ties to re­lieve some of that stress. Some ex­cit­ing events that will be hap­pen­ing on cam­pus this year in­clude a men’s health event with free beard shaves and hair­cuts, Sock-it-to-De­pres­sion, and sev­eral well­ness groups. Some of these groups are a stress and anx­i­ety group which will be start­ing on Oc­to­ber 10^th on Tues­days from 3-4 p.m., a mind­ful­ness group, and pos­si­bly a Yoga with Je­sus group. Ad­di­tion­ally, Well­ness Week is com­ing up on Oc­to­ber 23-29^th, dur­ing which a spe­cial speaker will be at chapel to talk about re­la­tion­ships and gen­der is­sues. To serve as re­minders to stu­dents to take care of them­selves, there are plans for mon­i­tors to be put up in the AC that will dis­play whole-per­son well­ness quotes, scrip­tures, and next steps for stu­dents to take. When I asked RJ Jen­nings, the as­so­ci­ate di­rec­tor of coun­sel­ing, what pos­i­tive ef­fects she’s seen these events have on stu­dents, she said, “Last year when we did the suc­cu­lent event in the spring to­ward fi­nals week, we re­ally got to see stu­dents who had never planted be­fore get their hands in the dirt. I’ve got­ten a few pic­tures emailed to me from stu­dents who had suc­cu­lents last year and they’re still alive this year. We know that when peo­ple are car­ing for other peo­ple or an­i­mals or plants, they ac­tu­ally in­crease their own per­sonal hap­pi­ness and their self-es­teem goes through the roof.”  

Stu­dents can at­tend as many of these events as they would like, and these do not af­fect their 8 free coun­sel­ing ses­sions avail­able to all stu­dents. RJ also wanted to en­cour­age stu­dents to take ad­van­tage of these ses­sions, as there is cur­rently a full team of 5 coun­selors ready with no wait­ing list. If you would like to know more about some of these well­ness events, please pay at­ten­tion to the Bethel­Now In­sta­gram page, chapel an­nounce­ments, and the screens in­side SG as more in­for­ma­tion will be an­nounced as the se­mes­ter con­tin­ues.