BATON ROUGE, La. (BRPROUD) — As finals week approaches, LSU is emphasizing different ways to deal with stress.
Graduate students Emanuela Wade and Marina Deyoe Pedraza believe that exercise and taking care of their mental health are important components of their final week.
“School is quickly coming to an end,” Deyoe Pedraza said.
“Okay, right away. In the fourth quarter, I always feel like, ‘Oh, I have to get everything done.’ It’s the final countdown,” Wade said.
Wade and Deyoe Pedraza are ready for class to end. They describe this semester in particular as a stressful time.
“It’s difficult because you’re trying to be a student and you’re trying to fulfill your responsibilities as a student, but you also have to be aware that you’re kind of a citizen of the world and what’s going on in the world. It’s still affecting you,” Deyoe Pedraza said.
LSU trustees have emphasized the need to utilize available resources to deal with stress. LSU University Recreation Executive Director Laurie Braden said the exercise center has helped many students.
“There’s a lot of evidence and research about physical activity, movement, and play that helps learning. Last week, we logged 25,000 visits by over 9,000 different individuals here at UREC. Just last week,” Braden said. Told.
Braden said students not only benefit from the training machines, but also from many other ways to stay active, including meditation, Pilates classes and high-intensity intervals.
Lyme Thibodeaux, director of mental health services at the LSU Student Health Center, also said that the demand for mental health services is increasing and that the most important thing is being prioritized.
“It’s very, very important to make sure that students are taking care of their mental and overall well-being and health,” Thibodeau said.
Thibodeau also said the benefit of this service is that it is actually free to students and will help students who are worried about not getting mental health care due to cost.
“So one of the really great luxuries of our center is that our therapy services are completely paid for by our students. So this is automatic when students enroll full-time. It’s included in tuition and fees, so when they come to us for therapy services, there’s basically no money exchanged, it’s already paid for them.” Thibodeau said.
Click here to learn more about our mental health services.
