SPCA service animals visit campus to help students with mental health

SFSU students relieve the stressors of school at the monthly Wags for Wellness event

San Francisco State University’s Health Promotion & Wellness team invited a pack of service dogs from the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (SPCA) to campus on Sept. 18 in their first Wags for Wellness event of the semester.

Wags for Wellness is an ongoing event through Health Promotion & Wellness, a unit dedicated to highlighting various ways to reduce the effects of stress in the campus community. In past years, Wags for Wellness occurred on a weekly basis but this semester only five opportunities are scheduled for students to meet and cuddle the volunteer animals.

“Community is so important,” said Vincent Lam, senior mental health education coordinator for Health Promotion & Wellness. “That’s one of the things we talk about as part of Health Promotion & Wellness, that feeling connected, feeling a sense of belonging is something that contributes to your overall well-being.”

Last semester, the American College Health Association conducted an assessment of various aspects of the overall health of the student body at SFSU. When asked to rate their stress level in the last 30 days, 50% of participants responded they felt “moderate stress,” while 26% felt “high stress.”

“With stress, it’s so impactful because it affects everything from physical symptoms such as headaches to body aches to cognitive/mental symptoms such as anxiety, irritability, and depression,” wrote Rudy DeAsis in an email to Golden Gate Xpress. 

DeAsis is the associate director of SFSU’s Counseling & Psychological Services (CAPS) department. “The top two reasons college students seek counseling are because of anxiety and depression, so this compounds the issue for college students even more so,” DeAsis wrote.

According to DeAsis, there has been a “massive increase” of students seeking help at CAPS for their mental health compared to past semesters. 

Nayleen Maldonado, a first-year mechanical engineering major, found even the move-in day for the dorms stressful. The rest of the semester has proved to be just as taxing “from finding classes to connecting to other students.”

“I got a card in the mail to join something called Metro, so I joined in order to feel a sense of community,” Maldonado said. 

According to their website, Metro is a campus wide program at SFSU that groups students into “learning communities” for the first two years of their education. The program focuses on creating support between the students in the program and offers academic advising to help keep students on-track for graduation. 

Kaylee Ortiz attended her freshman year of high school online during COVID-19. When the schools reopened for in-person instruction, the curriculum had changed. Now, as a first-year biology major, she finds the workload of a four-year university more demanding.

“I’m adjusting good, and I have a lot of support at home, but there is this weird transition where you have to take things serious,” Ortiz said.

Both Maldonado and Ortiz heard about the Wags for Wellness event through their English 104 professor, whom they say also emphasizes to students the need to find a community at SFSU. 

“Community support is paramount to the overall health or well-being of a university,” DeAsis wrote in an email. “At times when people think about student mental health they mainly think about CAPS, and this makes sense. We hope to be a big support of mental health for the students, but it really takes the entire university community to support all of the students.”

First-year student Saoirse Enna happened upon the Wags for Wellness event as a passerby – turning a “mediocre day” into one full of spontaneous fuzzy petting, smiling and laughing. 

Enna believes the high expectations of attending college can affect the mental health of students. Though self-described as “not really an anxious person,” Enna has yet to declare a major, finding it difficult to choose between a few different options. 

“It can be a stressful situation when you don’t really know for sure what you want to do,” Enna said. “There’s a looming sense of finality about deciding the rest of your future.”

The next Wags for Wellness event will be held on Wednesday, Oct. 9, in front of the Health Promotion & Wellness office near the Village dorms.