{"id":6415,"date":"2020-10-07T00:05:44","date_gmt":"2020-10-07T00:05:44","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/wordpress.lvc.edu\/wordpress\/lavie\/?p=6415"},"modified":"2020-10-07T00:05:44","modified_gmt":"2020-10-07T00:05:44","slug":"surviving-the-pandemic-students-mental-health-in-the-age-of-covid-19","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/wordpress.lvc.edu\/lavie\/2020\/10\/07\/surviving-the-pandemic-students-mental-health-in-the-age-of-covid-19\/","title":{"rendered":"Surviving the pandemic: students\u2019 mental health in the age of COVID-19"},"content":{"rendered":"
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By: Aly Richards ’21, Staff Writer<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Students have reported that their mental health is overall being impacted negatively by the pandemic.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cAt first, quarantine was not a huge deal for me because I\u2019m already a private person, so being cooped up at home was not a big deal for me,\u201d Jesse Kaufmann, a senior audio and music production major, said. \u201cBut over time, the way in which you lose the agency to go out and do anything really started to wear on me.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Jim Felty, a licensed professional counselor on campus, explains that poor mental health can impact many aspects of students\u2019 lives, especially in school.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cPoor mental health when we don\u2019t get support and help from either paraprofessionals or professionals can be very disruptive,\u201d Felty said. \u201cDepending on what that issue is will determine the type of disruption.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

According to Felty, there has been an influx of students to the health center this semester. Last semester, there were four counselors; this means that Felty and his coworker are taking on cases that the other counselors had and managing the influx of students coming into the health center. This makes managing the caseload difficult.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThere\u2019s a waitlist because there\u2019s that lag of trying to get in as many students as we can where we can,\u201d Felty said. \u201cI\u2019m hopeful that nobody is out there not getting the service that they want because of that.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Felty explains that there are many factors as to why he believes there is a negative effect on students\u2019 mental health. However, what he believes to be a big factor is the lack of social interaction and the difficulty for students to make a connection with one another.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI think the pandemic, especially the social isolation part, exacerbated mental health issues and also brought out some that were maybe latent in some students,\u201d Felty said. \u201cOnce we start not connecting with each other, communication goes down, we isolate and we start to internalize our feelings and our thoughts more, which doesn\u2019t help. In fact, what it does is generates more of those negative feelings.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A few students have echoed what Felty said. Several agreed that the lack of social interaction was contributing to poor mental health, and that it is one of the biggest stressors.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“I didn\u2019t realize I was a people person before COVID, and now I realize I need to be around certain people,\u201d Carter Kucier, a sophomore audio and music production major, said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Felty encourages any student who feels that they are struggling to visit the health center and to keep reaching out to get the help they need.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The health center, temporarily located in Bishop Library, has open-hours from 11 a.m. to 1 p.m. Monday through Friday. A 50\/50 peer helper is available at various points throughout the day.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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By: Aly Richards ’21, Staff Writer Students have reported that their mental health is overall being impacted negatively by the pandemic. \u201cAt first, quarantine was not a huge deal for me because I\u2019m already a […]<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-6415","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-campus-news"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.lvc.edu\/lavie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6415","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.lvc.edu\/lavie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.lvc.edu\/lavie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.lvc.edu\/lavie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.lvc.edu\/lavie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6415"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.lvc.edu\/lavie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6415\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.lvc.edu\/lavie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6415"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.lvc.edu\/lavie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6415"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.lvc.edu\/lavie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6415"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}