By Makayla Secrist Staff Writer
This year has taken quite the toll on people from around the world. College students especially have been hit hard. Between the stresses of classes, social lives, and work, students have also had to deal with a sudden pandemic stopping everything in it’s tracks.
Smack in the middle of the year classes were moved entirely online, the elementary and high schools closed entirely, and nearly everyone was forced to stay home around the clock. Although the state has opened up more, classes are still vastly different from what students are used to. A “new normal” has taken it’s place.
Now students have to worry about social distancing, proper mask wearing, and sanitizing regularly on top of everything else they need to deal with. Some have lost family members or friends due to COVID-19 and many more have lost their source of income. So how is Iowa Lakes helping students through these tough times?
By addressing the most important part of any human being. Their mental health.
The mind is where everything starts. If it’s not in a good place, the whole body suffers. Excess stress, anxiety, and/or depression can prove fatal if left untreated. ILCC’s Kevin Range spoke to Northwind about what the college now offers to students to help take care of their mental health.
“Covid-19 has placed a great deal of stress and anxiety on students,” said Range, “It makes it very difficult to concentrate on your classwork if you are feeling the pressures of college and also the effects of the pandemic. We found a funding source through a Northwest Iowa Cares Connections grant using CARES Act funds. The grant allows us to contract with TalkCampus and Esynergy to provide telehealth at no cost to students of Iowa Lakes. In addition, we added on-line mental health resources for students.”
Students have been able to speak entirely anonymously to other students facing similar issues through TalkCampus as well as a trained personnel. Range expounds on it further, “It is completely anonymous. You download the TalkCampus App and logon with your Iowa Lakes email and answer a few demographic questions and what you would like to talk about – then you are connected with trained personnel from TalkCampus and other students from around the world with similar issues to discuss experiences. This is a text based discussion much like other social media platforms. Someone posts, comment, post etc… The language is monitored by AI (Computer) and as the language escalates more highly trained people are added to the discussions. Users can logon as much or as little as they need.”
Esynergy is a little different. With the program, students get four full sessions with a professional therapist completely FREE though video calls. “After those sessions are used,” said Range, “the client has the option of private pay or a referral to a local agency.”
For a look into all of the mental health resources, go to this link.
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- Ekaterina
Call of the Lake 
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