About 15 University of Michigan students and faculty gathered on the fourth-floor auditorium of the Rackham Building Saturday morning for the first annual Whole Health Awareness and Community Knowledge Symposium. The symposium was organized by LSA sophomores Lily Lev and Natalyn Kapner and LSA junior Kathryn Torok, WHACKS co-founders. The organizers developed the idea for the symposium from their Undergraduate Research Opportunity Program project last year, which examined health and well-being in the Ann Arbor community.
The event featured four guest speakers across a range of disciplines who presented resources and techniques for maintaining a healthy lifestyle while navigating college life and young adulthood.
The first guest speaker, Nikhil Parekh, medical director of employee health at the Veterans Affairs Ann Arbor Healthcare System, spoke on the importance of mind and body practices such as meditation, acupuncture, acupressure, tai chi and breathing exercises to mitigate burnout in academic and professional life.
“There’s an epidemic of burnout in this world,” Parekh said. “There’s an epidemic of loneliness in this world, as well. … So burnout is multifactorial, it’s not just a person. … You go to your advisors and counselors, why’d you get to a B? Oh, why don’t you study harder next time? What is more important is to realize there are problems in the institutional levels as well.”
Dwaine Campbell, assistant director of psychology training at Counseling and Psychological Services, echoed Parekh’s sentiments in his talk on how to manage stress in college. Campbell said his interest in the topic stems from his own experiences with panic attacks. He said stress can exacerbate panic attacks, even if it is not the main reason for the onset of the attack.
Campbell emphasized the importance of monitoring stress levels and led the audience through different breathing techniques and meditation methods to help alleviate stress.
“Let’s say, for example you don’t have time to exercise, here’s how to destress in the moment,” Campbell said. “Put your feet in a comfortable position, close your eyes, take a nice deep breath in, and exhale.”
Campbell added having a strong support system of friends and family, cutting back on caffeine and alcohol, and having a healthy work-life balance can all help reduce stress in the lives of busy college students and professionals.
In an interview with The Michigan Daily at the event, Lev discussed how passionate she was about organizing the WHACKS symposium. Lev said she worked on a UROP project with Parekh last year, where they conducted a survey about different aspects of health and discovered disparities in health education, particularly pertaining to individual health behaviors.
“The results of that led me to realize where there were discrepancies in education related to different healthcare topics, and (I) wanted to put out a symposium where people could learn about it in a low-stakes environment and hear from different speakers in our community,” Lev said. “It’s really easy to make health-related changes and to improve your well-being in a low-cost and also low-stress way, and you can just make small changes (that) will have a big impact. You don’t have to do all these crazy things to improve your well-being.”
In an interview with The Daily, LSA senior Zafirah Rahman said she first heard about the event at this year’s Festifall and decided to attend to learn more about how to prioritize her mental health. Rahman said her biggest takeaway from Saturday’s event was how nutrition impacts stress and well-being.
“I thought about how this might be a good break right before Fall Break just to learn more about health and wellness,” Rahman said. “I think that’s hard for a lot of college students, including myself, and so learning about good eating habits and how to practice a diet that supports your academic and professional success is really important to hear about.”
Daily Staff Contributor Ellen Drejza can be reached at [email protected].
