On September 18th, San Francisco State University’s Health Promotion and Wellness team invited a group of service dogs from the United States Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (SPCA) to campus for the semester’s first “Wags for Wellness” event.
Wags for Wellness is an ongoing event hosted by Health Promotion & Wellness, a unit that introduces different ways to reduce the effects of stress in the campus community. In past years, Wags for Wellness has been held weekly, but this semester there are only five scheduled opportunities for students to meet and cuddle the volunteer animals.
“Community is so important,” says Vincent Lam, senior mental health education coordinator at Health Promotion and Wellness. “It’s one of the things we talk about as part of Health Promotion and Wellness – feeling connected and having a sense of belonging contributes to overall health.”
Last semester, the American College Health Association assessed various aspects of the overall health of San Francisco State University students. When asked to rate their stress levels over the past 30 days, 50% of participants reported feeling “moderately stressed” and 26% reported feeling “highly stressed.”
“Stress has huge implications as it affects everything from physical symptoms like headaches and body aches to cognitive and mental symptoms like anxiety, irritability and depression,” Rudy DeAssis said in an email to Golden Gate Express.
De Assis is the associate director of the Counseling and Psychological Services (CAPS) department at San Francisco State University. “This further complicates the issue for college students, as anxiety and depression are the primary reasons they seek counseling,” De Assis wrote.
DeAcis said there has been a “significant increase” in students seeking help for mental health at CAPS compared to past semesters.
Nayleen Maldonado, a freshman mechanical engineering major, said even move-in day was stressful, and the rest of the semester has been just as difficult, “from finding classes to interacting with other students.”
“I received an invitation to join an organization called Metro in the mail, so I joined because I wanted a sense of community,” Maldonado said.
According to its website, Metro is a campus-wide program at San Francisco State University that groups students into “learning communities” for the first two years of their education. The program focuses on building support among students in the program and provides academic advising to keep students on track to graduate.
Kaylee Ortiz took classes online her freshman year of high school during the COVID-19 pandemic. When her school resumed in-person classes, the curriculum changed. Now a freshman biology major, she finds the workload at a four-year university more demanding.
“I’m adjusting well and have a lot of support at home, but there’s a weird transition period where I have to take things seriously,” Ortiz said.
Maldonado and Ortiz both found out about the “Wags for Wellness” events through their English 104 professors, who they said also stress to students the need to find community at SFSU.
“Community support is paramount to the overall health and well-being of the university,” DeAsis said in an email. “When people think about student mental health, they primarily think of CAPS, and rightly so. We want to be a big support for student mental health, but it takes the entire university community to support all students.”
First-grader Saoirse Enna stumbled upon a Wags for Wellness event while passing by and transformed her “ordinary day” into one filled with petting, smiling and laughing at the fluffy animals.
Ena believes high expectations for university admission can affect students’ mental health. Although she describes herself as “not a very anxious person,” she is still undecided about her major and is finding it difficult to choose between several options.
“When you’re not sure what you want to do, it can be a stressful situation,” Enna says. “There’s this looming feeling of a final decision that’s going to determine the rest of your future.”
The next Wags for Wellness event will be held on Wednesday, October 9th in front of the Health Promotion & Wellness Office near the Village Dorms.
