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The COVID-19 virus became a concern in the United States in February 2020. For Montgomery County, Pa. and the Salus community, this pandemic changed our day-to-day routines on March 12, and could continue through the rest of the spring semester. For a majority of our community, this is a brand new experience that we might not know how to react or adapt to. Dr. Davis from the Center for Personal and Professional Development was able to share her expertise and advice for anyone who is experiencing mental health concerns during this time.
We talk a lot about self-care. We also say “Well, what does that mean?” We hear a lot about it on the radio and TV and even the professors talk about self-care. But what does that look like? So, my approach is to look at it from mind, body, and spirit. I worked at a YMCA for a long time and so the triangle of mind, body, and spirit kind-of stuck with me even into my psych training.
So, when I say mind, body, spirit – so let’s look at body. These are your basic biological needs. They’re usually the first things to go out the door with stress and anxiety because students feel like they have to study every minute of every day or they feel guilty, or they feel like they are going to fall behind. So, you need to take care of your body. You have to sleep, ideally 7 to 9 hours.
So that’s one of the first questions I ask my students who are struggling with anxiety and depression: how much are you sleeping? “Oh, enough.” Ok well, can you define enough? “Yeah. Five-and-a-half hours a night, sometimes four.” Ok well, we’re gonna need to talk about that.
Oftentimes, I’ll say “Exactly how much return do you think you’re getting from studying after midnight?” Really nothing, right? It’s the law of diminishing returns. So, close the book, take a nice hot shower, relax and head to bed. Get up refreshed and start over again. The thing about lack of sleep is that it feeds this negative cycle. So, you stay up late studying, you don’t sleep well. The next day you’re less alert, so it’s taking you longer to retain information, which, in turn makes you stay up later – do you see what I’m saying?
So, we try to nip that cycle in the bud and start a positive cycle where you’re feeling more alert because you’ve slept. The information is coming more quickly to you, so you don’t have to stay up as late studying, and so on and so forth. So, sleep is a big one.
I am huge proponent of exercise. I call it nature’s Xanax, basically, or nature’s anti-depressant. Twenty minutes a day – and I’ll joke with the students, like, here at Salus, when you’re a graduate student, it’s not about booty and bicep gains. We’re just about mental health gains. Get up and move your body. The body was made to move, and when we move our bodies, then we can sit down and study. So, if we have all that excess energy in our bodies, we’re going to feel agitated. We’re going to feel restless. It’s going to be harder to pay attention.
And eating. So, I don’t care what you eat. I just care that you eat enough. Oftentimes with depression and anxiety, we see a decrease in food intake – sometimes the opposite, more eating – the thing that has me most concerned is making sure that you’re getting enough calories to fuel your body and your brain.So that’s the body.
One thing that starts to go down the drain here at Salus is reaching out to your social support network. You don’t feel like you have time to reach out to parents or caregivers or people back home that love you. Staying connected via FaceTime, text, phone calls, that can be really important because it can remind you that there is a life outside of Salus. Not all students have very supportive family and it becomes more of a stressor when they reach out at home, so you know, we don’t want to push that. But, if you’ve got a great support network at home, reach out to them on the regular. You’ll start to feel better and you’ll start to feel more like yourself.
Building relationships and your cohort is really important. You’re with your fellow peers for a long time and sometimes it becomes like a little dysfunctional family and that’s normal. That’s part of the human condition. But, building even just one or two meaningful connections within your cohort – those are your comrades. They’re in the trenches with you while your studying. So, it’s important to connect because they have a shared experience. The research says that social support moderates the effects of stress on well-being. Here at Salus, yeah. It’s going to be high stress. But if we have good social support, it doesn’t negatively impact our health as much.
We do a lot of mindfulness exercises. This kind of goes back to the idea that we see a lot of anxiety in here. We know, based on research, that mindfulness exercises are really the antidote for anxiety. Bob and I both do a lot of talking about diaphragmatic breathing, progressive relaxation, anything that is going to keep you centered and not worrying about what comes next, not perseverating on what’s on the past, but what’s going on in the moment.
And then last, spirit. I go one of two ways. I kind of try to access for students if they’re connected to a faith. Are they actively engaged with that faith and in what way? If they’re not, ok, maybe it doesn’t look like it used to. Maybe it’s not regular reading of the bible every single night, or going to church every single week, like they might have outside of Salus. But, what can we bring into your life that can kind of echo that experience? Maybe it’s making sure that you do read your scripture, or whatever it is that you feel connected to in terms of something bigger than you, once a week. Or maybe you journal. Or maybe you do make it a point, like, “My self-care is going to be going to church every Sunday. I don’t care what happens, but that’s going to happen.”
Of course, we have students that are agnostic or atheist. So, we start to talk about what could you tap into to remind yourself that there is something bigger than you? We get really focused here at Salus that it becomes tunnel vision, and you forget that there’s a whole wide world out there. So, for some people, that’s just kind of getting out of the building. Literally, getting out of the building. Over to the Zen garden over there, and just sitting outside. It doesn’t hurt that the vitamin D can kind of activate a little of that good mood.
It takes a tremendous amount of vulnerability and humility to ask for help. Students at this level of study have learned, and this is one of their great character strengths, how to dig in and be tenacious and figure it out on their own. But this is something that they don’t have to figure out on their own. It can be very humbling to say that the very first time. I can’t do this on my own. I have a lot of respect for all of my clients that come in because they are so brave to have been able to admit to themselves that they can’t do it by themselves.
In a time like this, it is important to remember to take care of yourself, both physically and mentally. While at home, if you are struggling with your mental health, reach out to the Center for Personal and Professional Development. Dr. Davis and her fellow counselor, Robert O’Brien, will be continuing operation through online video sessions. To schedule an appointment, email tdavis@salus.edu or robrien@salus.edu. And remember, as a community, we are Salus Strong.
