On Sept. 12, Oswego State held its third annual Mental Health and Wellness Fair, sponsored and organized by the Counseling Services Center and Peer Educators, with the aim of educating both Oswego State students and employees about different elements of wellness.

This year, the Mental Health and Wellness Fair was organized by both Robin McAleese from the Counseling Services Center and Cathy Johnston, an employee assistant program coordinator for Oswego State. This is the first year that the fair has been extended to employees and students.

“We have been trying to have our own health fair on campus for quite a while now for employees, and I knew that students had a health fair every year, so I talked to people in the Counseling Services Center, and we decided we could partner together,” Johnston said. “We just tried to decide what vendors we could bring in from the community that would help employees, like the tobacco free network and the legal aid society, so we’re just trying to keep things in mind with the wellness wheel established this year.”

Johnston had a large role in involving employees in this year’s Health and Wellness Fair. On campus, Johnston serves as a person employees can go to if they would like to be matched with a counselor or be referred somewhere else. She meets with employees individually and then points them to the appropriate services.

The fair has grown since the previous year, partially due to other organizations with which the Counseling Services Center partnered.

“We have great campus partners, partners from the fitness center, It’s on Us and Title IX,” McAleese said. “It’s great information for students as they wander through.”

At this year’s Mental Health and Wellness Fair, students and employees were able to take a note card with the eight elements of wellness and, while traveling around the fair and approaching different tables, get stamps. 

Students were able to enter drawings to win prizes, which were donated by campus departments and businesses around the Oswego area, including Dharma Yoga North and Murphy’s Auto.

“The purpose of the fair is to raise awareness of mental health and other types of wellness,” said Daisy Ko, Oswego State graduate student and counseling center intern. “There’s different aspects in terms of someone’s wellness, and we’re trying to represent all of them and raise awareness of how they can manage to improve the quality of their life in general. [Students] don’t need to really commit their time to come here. They can just walk by and get information and maybe de-stress a little.”

Besides raising awareness for the different types of wellness, another point of the fair was to show the Oswego State community how many organizations and services the campus has to support both students and faculty, including individual and group counseling, peer educator programs and “Let’s Talk,” with walk-in counseling hours in the residence halls around campus.

“Emotional health is so tied to everything on campus. When a student is supported to improve their emotional health, they’ll do better in the classroom, make better decisions, and employees are the same way,” McAleese said. “I think the biggest thing about the fair is that we wanted to show that we are a caring community and that when people are suffering from stress or mental health issues, that we care about each other and that we’re going to be there to support each other with information and knowledge.”

Photo by Austin Dearborn | The Oswegonian