Students focus in on their mental health

Troy’s TRIO program held a workshop focused on mental health in Hawkins Hall last week.

The workshop began with a presentation by Title IX Coordinator Grace Wagstaff regarding stress management and its potential impact on a student’s mental health. She walked students through different methods of reducing stress as well as the least harmful ways to handle large amounts of stress.

The second half of the workshop consisted of an activity called “Let it Go and Let it Grow.” Each student wrote two letters to themselves – one negative and one positive.

The negative letter was written first and shredded to symbolize students disposing of negative feelings about themselves. Then, they wrote a positive letter to themselves for reassurance and healing from the negative thoughts.

“My hope was just for them to take away that there's still hope,” said Nevaeh White, a TRiO program advisor that organized the event. “You can still move forward.

“There will be some times that are challenging, but there are ways for you to maneuver through them.”

That same sentiment was White’s goal with the entire workshop. With how often she sees students struggling, she said she knew something needed to be done to give them an outlet and a solution.

“I have experienced a lot of students coming in and expressing their mental health issues or struggles and just being very open and clear about those situations that they were going through,” White said. “I thought it would be important to kind of host a workshop that would allow them to take part in healthy coping strategies.

“If there's something that could be done about small situations that happen here, I want students to know that it's okay to voice what you are feeling and that you have help.”

One student particularly valued those smaller situations. Ty’Shaun Caldwell, a sophomore social work major from Pell City, Alabama, said that his goal at the workshop was to learn to work better through his everyday struggles.

“As a college student, most of the scenarios that she was talking about, we go through on a day-to-day basis, and sometimes we don't know how to cope with them,” Caldwell said. “Me going to that was basically me committing to myself, basically getting better and helping with the stress relievers.”

Caldwell said he’s glad that, as a Troy student, he has access to resources like the mental health workshop, and he encourages others to consider their mental health before it gets worse.

“Sometimes we, as college students, we mask stress and mental health, and then we don't realize it until the very end, or until it gets bad,” Caldwell said. “With workshops like this, it allows us to recognize it at an early stage and then know how to cope with it going further.”

While this event was held by TRIO’s Student Support Services program, there are three programs in total. The other two are the McNair Scholars Program and Upward Bound, preparing economically disadvantaged students for graduate programs and preparing and transitioning high school students for college, respectively.