The problems of maintaining students' health, instilling healthy lifestyle skills, creating conditions aimed at strengthening health, and maintaining physical, mental, and spiritual health are very relevant today.
It is necessary to provide students with the opportunity to maintain health during their period of study at college, to develop the necessary knowledge and abilities for a healthy lifestyle, and to teach them to use that knowledge in everyday life.
The issue of students' mental health is especially acute. Many of them experience stress because they cannot deal with the academic load. Fortunately, they can always turn to special services with a “write my essay for me cheap” request and receive professional help. Thus, at least partially, they can make their student life easier.
The Mental Health Landscape
Researchers have found that a significant number of college students are struggling to maintain their mental health, and a growing number of young people are considering dropping out. In fact, 2 in 5 undergraduate students report that they often experience emotional stress while studying, according to a 2022 Gallup Lumina Foundation survey of 12,000 people.
The survey found that more than 40% of undergraduate students had considered dropping out recently, up from 34% in the first year of the COVID-19 pandemic. Most cited stress and personal mental health, rather than financial concerns. Experts say the teen years are a vulnerable time for mental health, and the significant changes that often come with starting college add additional stress.
About 75% of lifetime mental health problems begin by the mid-20s, which means that the college years are a very epidemiologically vulnerable time. And then, for many teens and young adults, enrolling in a college comes with newfound autonomy (getting away from parental control). Young people may experience the first signs and symptoms of mental health problems while at this new level of independence, which also includes autonomy in making mental health decisions.
Wellness Centers for Students
The goals of wellness centers are the following:
- Education and development of a free, talented, physically healthy personality, ready for creative work and moral behavior, and focused on a healthy lifestyle.
- Create conditions for expanding the leisure space of college students, comprehensively develop the personality of students, and hold events on spiritual, moral, and legal education.
- Promotion of students’ healthy lifestyle. Reduction of cases of antisocial behavior among students, assistance to all participants in the educational process in acquiring the knowledge and abilities necessary for the formation of sustainable motivation for health and a healthy lifestyle.
- Development of cooperation between teachers and students.
The tasks of wellness centers are the following:
- Development of individual and personal qualities of students, assistance in the formation of general and professional competencies in students according to the educational standard in their specialties.
- Creation of an environment that provides conditions for physical and mental development, and improvement of ethical and communicative qualities of the personality of college students.
- Involvement of students in socially active life by organizing the work of clubs, health schools, sports sections, and weekend clubs.
- Monitoring of social and educational, cultural and creative, health-saving activities of the wellness centers, as well as activities to popularize and promote a healthy lifestyle among students and the population.
- Prevention of deviant and asocial, including illegal behavior of college students.
- Development and implementation of individual and collective programs for improving the health of students in an educational organization based on the results of monitoring risk factors for students.
- Development of educational programs aimed at maintaining the health of students and introducing them to a healthy lifestyle.
- Psychological and pedagogical support for students.
FISU Healthy Campus
The International University Sports Federation (FISU) is the key organization for the development of university sports in the world, which unites more than 170 national and five continental university sports federations.
The FISU Healthy Campus program is an initiative aimed at promoting the ideas and values of a healthy lifestyle and the development of physical education and sports in the student community. One of the key objectives of the program is to develop and improve the health and well-being of students, faculty, and college administration.
Based on 100 criteria, universities are assessed in seven areas:
- Physical education and sports
- Proper nutrition
- Disease prevention
- Social and psychological adaptation and psycho-emotional state of students
- Prevention of socially negative phenomena
- Caring for the environment, promoting sustainable development, and nurturing social responsibility
- Project management of "Healthy Campus."
Wellness centers continue to evolve. They play a crucial role in college life because they provide students with the support needed to thrive both academically and personally.
