The meeting area for the workshops is in the MACCC Conference Room 181.
The Medical and Counseling Care Center (MACCC) is offering workshops for mental health awareness.
Three MACCC staff members will run the workshops: Tyson Alexander on Anxiety Toolbox, Michelle Overman on Mindfulness 101 and Karen Douglas on Discovering Hope.
Anxiety Toolbox will focus on coping and anxiety, Mindfulness 101 will practice acute awareness and Discovering Hope will teach students ways to work with depression.
Each workshop will have three sessions. After the third session, the workshop starts over again. Sessions are Tuesday for Mindfulness 101, Wednesday for Discovering Hope and Thursday for Anxiety Toolbox at 11:00 a.m. Attendees will receive a Chapel credit.
“We started them last spring,” said Tyson Alexander, interim director and Anxiety Toolbox leader. “Since then, we kinda soft-rolled them out. We didn’t necessarily market them very heavily. We didn’t really publicize them very much.”
Alexander said the key marketing strategy is simply notifying different departments about the workshops.
“We’re trying to really make them more known so they can become more available,” Alexander said.
Students sit in this area of Room 181 to write in handed-out workbooks and look at powerpoints, Overman said.
Alexander said the goal of the workshops is to help students achieve personal development through a presentational format and not group therapy.
Michelle Overman, counselor for the MACCC and Mindfulness 101 leader, said the team got the idea for the workshops after hearing about different universities using similar workshops.
“That kind of gave us the idea ‘Well, maybe we should give these a shot,’” Overman said. “And I think it also was encouragement of ‘Oh, if other universities are doing them and having some success, then maybe we can, too.’”
Overman said the growing demand for personal development and mental health services along with counselor schedules becoming full also contributed to creating the workshops.
Overman said the workshops will help the students in multiple areas without face-to-face counseling.
