Have you ever sacrificed your mental health due to an overload of school assignments? Perhaps you’ve kept yourself awake into the early hours of the morning to finish a project. Maybe you’ve pushed away your relationships, because they’ve become too distracting. Or you have even had a mental breakdown, because you have multiple exams to take in a week.

If you can relate to having these mental health issues with school, you fall into the 80% of other college students who too feel overwhelmed by their college responsibilities, according to a study conducted by the National Alliance on Mental Illness.

This is a startling number of students who feel overwhelmed by college, and with Los Medanos College entering into its final exam period in two weeks, it is important to take time to focus on mental health.

When students become stressed by schoolwork, they push out positive mental practices since they are hard to fit in with a hectic schedule. During these stressful times, positive mental practices are really vital. “Positive mental practices” can include, but are not limited to: getting enough hours of sleep, spending time with loved ones, eating regularly and allowing for down time.

Engaging in these practices makes it a lot easier to maintain a good wellbeing when combatting school assignments and can overall lead to better success.

Doing so can be tricky however, especially when schoolwork is taking up a large amount of time. If figuring out how to balance positive practices and getting schoolwork done is difficult, LMC provides helpful resources to students to assist them with the demanding task.

The Mental Wellness Program at LMC services provides on campus free, confidential therapy to students in a safe and welcoming environment. The services are provided throughout the academic year and are offered twice a week at the Pittsburg campus and once a week at the Brentwood center.

For scholastic help, counseling is also offered to students both for scheduled and drop-in appointments. These sessions can help students in decision-making, career planning, graduation requirements, testing and more. It can greatly help to discuss school-based stressors so they are easier to combat.

It is important to focus on mental health and use additional resources especially as LMC approaches finals week.

For more information on the Mental Wellness Program please visit www.losmedanos.edu/counseling/wellness.asp or email [email protected]. For more information on LMC counseling services, please visit www.losmedanos.edu/counseling.