Coast Guard community checks on its ‘wellness’
Academy holds inaugural event that reflects commitment to mental health
New London — For cadets, faculty and staff at the U.S. Coast Guard Academy, Thursday was a personal day.
The academy’s first-ever Wellness and Resilience Day featured workshops on physical, mental and emotional health, social and family relationships and substance abuse. In the planning stages for months, it reflected the academy’s stepped-up commitment to those facing stressors associated with the academy’s challenging environment, according to Capt. Eva Van Camp, the assistant superintendent.
“We are investing in you,” Van Camp told the community, which assembled in the Leamy Hall auditorium at the start of the day.
In an earlier interview, Van Camp said the event was not a direct response to recent publicity surrounding the U.S. Coast Guard’s mishandling of an internal investigation into decades of rapes and sexual assaults at the academy.
Among the presenters Thursday was Rear Adm. Dana Thomas, director of health, safety and work-life for the Coast Guard, a post in which she oversees the service’s health care system.
The academy’s more than 1,000 cadets as well as some 60 faculty and staff attended the workshops, with many opting for one of the two yoga sessions presented by Meghan Smith, owner of the Hot on Bank yoga studios in New London and Mystic.
Smith, who used to run a yoga club at the academy before the COVID-19 outbreak, said a lot of cadets are among her regular clients.
“It’s not just physical, it’s mental,” she said of the stress yoga can relieve. “It calms the nervous system.”
Hundreds of people stretched out on the floor of the Leamy Hall ballroom during each of Smith’s sessions.
After one of the sessions, Micki Huynh, a senior cadet from Hershey, Pa., said she chose yoga because she thought it would be fun. Recalling that her freshman year was especially stressful because of COVID’s impact, she said it was important for the academy to address cadets’ mental health needs.
Christy Rose, a support specialist
with the academy’s Office of Inclusion and Diversity, played a key role in planning Thursday’s events.
Cadets, she said, juggle the demands of academics, military training, participation in sports and “whatever is going on in their home communities.”
Rose said revelations about the coverup of the investigation of sexual misconduct at the academy has been another stressor “for all of us” at the school.
Early in the day, several former cadets told stories of stressful experiences. One, a 2012 graduate, described his inability to cope with his father’s cancer diagnosis. He gradually withdrew from others, turned to alcohol and became suicidal before “forcing” himself “to be vulnerable” and seek help.
Another speaker, a mother of three children, learned she had breast cancer and “took control,” assembling the medical team “that saved my life.”
Maria Sirois, an inspirational speaker, consultant and psychologist, gave a keynote address in which she described resilience as the capacity to adapt to stress, loss and trauma “heartfully.”
Over time, contemplating each day’s positive moments can actually have an effect on the brain, she said.
“The brain will become a little more facile at recognizing and savoring the good.”