Men­tal Health Aware­ness

I hope this year has been start­ing off good for you all. I know it has been a strug­gle for a lot of us so I wanted to talk about men­tal health.

I found this pic­ture and it made me think about how not every bad thought has to con­sume your mind. Credit: Pix­abay

Every­one han­dles stress, anx­i­ety, pres­sure, and anger dif­fer­ently. Men­tal health is ris­ing world­wide and in or­der to be your best self we must first ac­knowl­edge de­pres­sion, sad­ness, anger, trig­gers, and all the feel­ings be­hind it.

De­pres­sion comes in a va­ri­ety of forms and with the pan­demic sui­cide has gone up tremen­dously. We have to break the stigma and come to­gether. We need to have open con­ver­sa­tions about it and make sure we are aware that peo­ple are strug­gling now more than ever.

I wanted to open up the con­ver­sa­tion with some stu­dents and see how they deal with their men­tal is­sues so that we could share ideas and help one an­other.

The first per­son I spoke to was Cici who is a stu­dent here at Maryville. I asked her in what ways do you deal with your men­tal health. She said “my two biggest things are work­ing out and get­ting time to my­self to be with my own thoughts and re­gather my­self with­out the in­flu­ence of any­one else.” Cici is a stu­dent ath­lete here at Maryville and I think she is some­one who holds value and good ad­vice.

As an ath­lete you are jug­gling so much and as be­ing a for­mer D1 ath­lete I think un­der­stand­ing that jug­gling so many things at once is of­ten over­whelm­ing and you must re­mem­ber to take care of your­self. Ath­lete or not you have to take care of you be­cause at the end of the day no one else will.

My sec­ond in­ter­view was from a stu­dent at UMSL. She is study­ing to be­come a teacher and we all ad­mire and re­spect teach­ers. I asked her to same ques­tion I asked Cici. Sophia said “I try to get off my phone and re­lax as well as med­i­ta­tion which helps me a lot. I also make lists for my weeks and break­ing down my days so I know what I’m do­ing at each point in the day.”

I ad­mired her re­sponse be­cause if we just look at what we have to do to­day then to­mor­row and the next aren’t so heavy.

Don’t put off your men­tal heath be­cause you de­serve hap­pi­ness, and it could hin­der your jour­ney. Credit: UCF

Re­mem­ber to talk about your feel­ings. They are valid and it can help your sort things out. Keep ac­tive and work­ing out. Even if you don’t like to work­out get out­side and take a walk. Eat­ing well and stay­ing hy­drated helps too. Don’t be afraid to ask for help be­cause some­times we just need to know we’re not alone.

Re­mem­ber to take breaks and rest when you can. Some­one loves and cares about your well-be­ing so even at your low­est re­mem­ber that the peo­ple in your cor­ner are there for a rea­son. Use them when you can’t do it your­self.

I hope these tips made your day in some way or at least re­minded you to prac­tice self-care. Don’t for­get that we each have a pur­pose and don’t give up un­til yours is found.

Take care and un­til next time.