By Gabriella Cavaleri, Staff Writer
The Center for Healthy Living hosted a mental wellness resource fair in Hillwood Commons on Sept. 14, 2022.
Junior social work major Katelyn Jordan believes the fair was a very helpful resource for students, particularly for those in her major.
“I loved it. I got a lot of resources and information from a lot of different counseling centers,” Jordan said. “A lot of people were very nice and gave me their contact information to ask questions. I have a lot of flyers to look at.”
The Director of the Center for Healthy Living, Dawn Loshigian, was pleasantly surprised at the turn out for the mental wellness resource fair. She wasn’t expecting to see so many people interested in mental health.
“It’s amazing,” Loshigian said. “It kinda teaches me that mental health is important to the students, so I’m grateful for that.”
Loshigian hopes that the resource fair will increase the presence of The Center for Healthy Living and make students aware of the resources available to them. The goal of the clinic is to help students not only manage their mental health issues here at school but afterwards when they enter the community.
“We want to help students to become helpers,” Loshigian said. “We want to help students who have mental health needs and we want to help staff who want to help their students.”
Although people have become more aware of mental health issues, Loshigian believes there’s still a strong stigma that prevents people from reaching out for help, and acknowledges that this problem is especially prevalent for certain student populations.
“Here at school we are finding that the typical client would be Caucasian female, but we know our men are suffering. We know our male students need some support sometimes, but they might not be as comfortable coming in. We want to make sure that we as a group practice diversity equity and inclusion within our clinic,” Loshigian said.
Loshigian has faith that with time, people will become more used to the idea of counseling and mental health conditions will become more normalized. She notes that overtime she’s noticed diversification of people entering these fields and it’s an exciting change.
“Some students from certain cultures may feel they want to come in for consoling, if their form of diversity is represented there maybe they’ll feel more comfortable and encouraged,” she said.
The Center for Healthy Living wants people to feel supported on campus and Loshigian is excited for the future of the clinic.
“We have more people helping out this year than we’ve ever had,” Loshigian remarked.
The Center for Healthy Living staff includes licensed mental health professionals, graduate student therapists, and nutritionists who are offering counseling services.
Visit the LIU Center for Healthy Living webpage to find more information about counseling services.
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