Medill freshman Jenny Yank has always had trouble sleeping. When nothing seemed to help her nod off, she registered online for “Getting a Good Night’s Sleep,” a workshop at the Life Skills Center.
The Life Skills Center opened last spring so that Counseling and Psychological Services could offer more workshops for students.
Relaxation techniques, background information on sleep patterns and tips on how to make it easier to fall asleep were all addressed in the session last week led by Cindy Chatel, a pre-doctoral psychology intern at CAPS.
The Life Skills Center has expanded their classes from the two most popular workshops — stress-management clinics and relationship classes — to include about 15 different workshops each quarter. These workshops aim to help students develop exactly what the name of the center implies: life skills, Chatel said.
“We’re finding in students that high school teaches bio, chem, English, history, but not a lot of things that people need in life,” said Paulette Stronczek, coordinator of developmental programming at CAPS. “There’s no class for that.”
The workshops are held in groups that can range from two to 30 students. These sessions help students enter the world of therapy without individual counseling, Stronczek said.
“People feel they may not need individual therapy around a certain issue, but they want more information about how they can manage this even better,” Stronczek said. “But they’re not in trouble.”
The Life Skills Center was located in the Searle Student Health Service building until spring 2004, when it was moved next door to 619 Emerson St. to ease congestion at Searle, Stronczek said.
Part of the sessions’ appeal for students is that they can attend an unlimited numbers of sessions, as compared to a limit of 12 free sessions for individual counseling, she added. After 12 individual sessions, students must start paying for individual counseling.
Organizers chose issues for the classes to address based on nation data and CAPS research.
Chatel, who is interested in studying the impact of sleep, said students who attend competitive schools often say sleep is the first thing to go when they get busy. But, she said, students need to realize that sleep is essential for their health. It strengthens the immune system, stimulates growth hormones, and affects mood and vitality.
Loud roommates, stress and light all affect sleep patterns, Chatel said. She said if students are having trouble sleeping, they should change their sleeping environment.
Yank was glad she attended the event, but she said the workshop focused too much on stress as a cause of insomnia. Yank thinks her sleepless nights might be caused by a medical problem rather than stress.
Reach Ashima Singal at [email protected].
