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Wintry ghost stories offered at Lovejoy Library PAGE 3
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Women’s basketball takes home win from Lindenwood PAGE 8
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Thursday, January 19, 2023 Vol. 76 No. 16
COVID-19’s impact on SIUE: then and now units such as Illinois Department of Public Health and Madison County Public Health before the pandemic. “In January, when we were aware that While the pandemic isn’t over yet, with restrictions lightening, SIUE’s pub- there was a coronavirus starting to imlic health experts look back on the last few pact internationally, we sort of rallied the troops around and said ‘We need to meet years’ impact on SIUE. Public Health Response Coordinator as an emergency management program to address the issue Michael Schultz for the university,’” said that the inGreenwalt said. formation used Schultz said to make decisions that he’s not sure was information The science still says COVID will ever received from the get to the point Centers for Disto stay up on your where SIUE will ease Control and close again. Prevention and Ilvaccinations and I “Because of the linois Department would encourage amount of people of Public Health, that are vaccinated as well as the govpeople to do that.” now, and the preernor’s directives. cautions that are “Like everyMichael Schultz, Public Health built up and the body else, it was Response Coordinator amount of people a moving target that have already throughout the had COVID,” pandemic. There Schultz said. “I was a team that met weekly, at least weekly, sometimes two don’t know that we would ever get to that or three times a week, to manage the pan- point where we need to close down.” Schultz also said that if any mitigation demic,” Schultz said. Riane Greenwalt, director of Health would need to kick in, SIUE may need to Service, said that Health Service was used go back to fully masking on campus. “That would be the first mitigation to being in close contact with public health EMILY STERZINGER editor-in-chief
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that would need to happen, but at this point I don’t see the numbers for that to happen, and looking at the area, we’re not there either,” Schultz said. Greenwalt said she hoped everyone thought SIUE handled the COVID-19 pandemic fairly well. Health Service was able to partner with the rest of the university to give guidance. “[Schultz] was a tremendous help trying to get us our statistics,” Greenwalt said. “I think that we were able to at least give enough safety information and try to keep the university as healthy as possible; obviously we recognize many people did contract COVID, but as far as having a negative outcome, I think we did pretty well.” Schultz said that SIUE did an “all right” job handling the pandemic. “I don’t know that anybody can say they did an exemplary job because of the changing targets that we had to always chase,” Schultz said. Greenwalt noted a difference between public health and medical health, describing them as partners that don’t impact each other as much as one would think. Public health generally refers to the collective health of
a population, whereas medical health denotes a case by case basis. Schultz affirmed the right of individuals to still wear a mask, and said those who do should not be questioned on it. “I don’t think a judgment should be made on anybody that wears a mask,” Schultz said. “I think they’re doing that not only to protect themselves but to protect others. I think that’s something we learned through the pandemic and will hopefully continue. The science still says to stay up on your vaccinations and I would encourage people to do that.”
Counseling services directors equip campus with tools, resources through Mental Health First Aid DYLAN HEMBROUGH reporter
Many faculty and staff were recently trained in the Mental Health First Aid curriculum by counseling services directors Lisa Thompson-Gibson and Jessica Ulrich. “Mental Health First Aid is a standardized curriculum through the National Council for Mental Well-Being, so facilitators are trained to use their curriculum verbatim, and that is for fidelity of the content,” Thompson-Gibson said. “It’s evidencebased training.” Thompson-Gibson said Mental Health First Aid, or MHFA, is meant to mirror what most people generally think of as physical health crisis intervention. “If you think about first aid from a physical perspective, when we learn about CPR, we aren’t being trained to be first responders and medical personnel,” Thompson-Gibson said. “We’re trained to stabilize the person that’s having some sort of physical distress. This is sort of the parallel to that.” MHFA was first created in
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Australia and brought to the U.S. in 2008 through the Missouri and Maryland mental health departments. A commonly-used acronym in the program is “ALGEE,” which stands for “Assess for risk of suicide or harm, Listen non-judgementally, Give reassurance and information, Encourage appropriate professional help, Encourage self-help and other support strategies,” according to the MHFA website. “There are different tracks of MHFA,” Thompson-Gibson said. “There’s one for general populations, there’s one for youth, [and] there’s one for higher education, which is the one that we’re going to be delivering on Friday. The training is about seven and a half hours long, and it has some distinct pieces to it that have to do with understanding points of help-seeking that happens for people, what might deter people from help-seeking, things about stigma, trying to minimize those particular concerns and considerations, as well as giving the participants an understanding of some of the more general mental health concerns or crises.” General mental health con-
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cerns or crises Thompson-Gibson and Ulrich brought up during this training include depression, anxiety, psychosis, trauma and substance abuse, as well as signs that may point to these concerns. “A lot of what we were doing was giving some background information on what some various signs and symptoms are of early, middle, and then crisis stage … for different signs of distress,” Ulrich said. “[We were] teaching them to identify those early warning signs, how to intervene at an early phase so that it doesn’t progress into more of a crisis situation, and then making them aware that there are resources available to provide to individuals who are in distress, mostly because faculty and staff are on the front lines when it comes to intervening with individuals with mental health concerns.” Ulrich said that, though this initiative began at SIUE in October of last year, she hopes to have it taught twice a semester from here on out. “Our goal is to try to teach it probably two times a semester to be able to just continuously arm the campus with tips and
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strategies for identifying and helping folks that are struggling with mental health concerns,” Ulrich said. Ulrich said the MHFA program has been offered to different departments at SIUE over time, including social work, the school of pharmacy and the school of dental medicine. While the plan is to offer general courses, some departments have required MHFA training for their students because of the level of patient interaction associated with those careers. “Folks that are going to have patients are going to have these opportunities to intercede and do referrals,” Thompson-Gibson said. “Not that we wouldn’t see a need for support in other disciplines, because I think it’s just across all society, but wanting to equip those folks that are in the position of regularly helping, to help them have the confidence that they need to stabilize somebody … and help them get the help they need.” Ulrich said part of the program focuses on self-care for those utilizing what they learned in the MHFA course.
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“I think first of all … being comfortable to approach them, knowing what tools and strategies [and] resources are there to offer support, and then practicing self-care themselves as well,” Ulrich said. “A lot of times serving in that capacity can be emotionally draining, and we need to make sure that they’re practicing selfcare in order to continue helping the campus community.” Ulrich said she hopes MHFA will help the campus population, faculty, staff and students alike, to better engage with one another when it comes to these potential mental health concerns. “The feedback that we receive from faculty and staff is that they don’t feel comfortable [or] trained in order to navigate these concerns,” Ulrich said. “I’m really hopeful that it gives the campus community the confidence to be able to identify someone in distress and know what resources and where to direct them to.” Thompson-Gibson said plans are in the works for another MHFA training session on Thursday, March 2, and Friday, March 3, in SSC 1201 from 8 a.m. to noon.
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