By Stefanie Sciolaro
Baldwinsville, NY- – Since its founding in 2000, Crossfit has begun to grow in popularity. The sport combines high intensity with low durations. The workouts incorporate endurance, strength, and flexibility in order to exert the most out of participants in a shorter period of time.
Crossfit has grown to over two billion members and 10,000 gyms all around the world. This worldwide epidemic prides itself on the importance of a healthy community atmosphere. However, many individuals feel Crossfit is meant for only those of a specific age and body build.
“The uniqueness of Crossfit lies in how universal it is when it comes to who can do it. I have athletes ranging in ages from 14 to 64 with all different skill levels” Smokey Hollow Crossfit co-owner Tim MacConehey said.
Members of the Crossfit community have the opportunity to compete year round in a series of competitions, in both team and individual divisions. Every year these competitions stand as the main qualifiers for the Crossfit Games. The Crossfit Games, is this sports equivalent to the Olympics. The best athletes in the world come together to compete for who will be crowned fittest woman and man on earth.
In the past, the Crossfit Games have been held in Carson, California. However, the venue has been moved to Madison, Wisconson. The Games will begin this August.
For more information, visit Crossfit’s website.
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2nd Annual Business Symposium Panel Discussion
Official flyer for the event
On October 14, 2016 the Oswego Alumni Association, Inc. of State University of New York at Oswego had its second Annual Business Symposium Panel Discussion.
Questions were based off of topics like diversity, equity, and inclusion in business. Panelists discussed how diversity benefits a work environment, how to enhance inclusion in the workplace, and ways in which the panelists have faced diversity throughout their own careers.
According to recent academic research, diversity in the workplace makes a business stronger and more adaptable than organizations with employees of a single background.
“Programs set platforms for your organization’s brand but you still need to do your part to make it part of the business your diversity brand is just as important,” said Dennis Shuler, executive chairman of Kinetic Consulting and a 1978 Oswego graduate.
“Having a diverse management team within your business will benefit and enhance inclusion in the workplace,” said Melanie Littlejohn, regional executive director of National Grid.
Of 321 large global enterprises—companies with at least $500 million in annual revenue—surveyed in a Forbes study in 2011, 85 percent agreed or strongly agreed that diversity is crucial to improving innovation in the workplace.
“A business can benefit by the creativity aspects that the employees when they work together bring to the table,” said Jennifer Shropshire.
When it came to inclusion Harry Bronson said to take affirmative action should be recognized.
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National emergency declared in child and teen mental health – what this means for college students
Photo by MGN. In early October, a group of health professionals and psychiatric experts around the nation gathered enough data to declare a national emergency in child and adolescent mental health.
This comes nearly two years into the COVID-19 pandemic, and for young adults specifically in higher education, their mental health is also taking a toll.
“With the environment constantly changing, it’s kind of hard to reach stability in mental health,” Nicole Hillyard, a student at University at Buffalo said about her own struggles this year.
This includes SUNY Oswego students who have been feeling the effects of keeping up with mandates as the school resumes in-person activities.
“We’re so used to just having all these online classes, and not doing as much, and now we’re doing so much more,” Seth Nesbitt, a SUNY Oswego student said in regards to coming back in person. “I feel like a lot of my peers and I are having a hard time with the readjustments.”“I just needed to take this semester off to help fix my mental health”
KEAUNDREA HANDFORDA study called Healthy Minds Network found that last fall, college students in particular reported peak levels of depression and anxiety.
The study is led by four professors at different universities, and it details the rising trend over the last several years of mental health concerns, especially depression and anxiety, among college students.
Experts with the study reported that 47% of students screened positive for “clinically significant symptoms of depression, and/or anxiety,” which is the highest percentage since the trials began in 2007.
This data comes from the Healthy Minds Network website – it shows the percentage of students who have screened positive for depression and anxiety from 2007 to 2021. Graph created by reporter Melanie Higgins. “I have terrible anxiety attacks, like constantly, so I kinda knew that if I lived alone, especially two hours away, I would have to come home every day, and I knew that wouldn’t have worked,” Keaundrea Handford, a student at SUNY Brockport said about why she took this semester off. “I just needed to take this semester off to help fix my mental health.”
The Healthy Minds Network also studied that feeling of isolation, something Handford said she dreaded about going back to school.
In the study, they found that about 66% of students indicated feeling isolated from others sometimes or often, which experts said is a key risk factor in mental health.
At Wayne Behavioral Health, a mental health center located in Wayne County, representatives said most facilities no longer have enough staff to cover the rise in mental health concerns. However, the introduction of telehealth services during the pandemic helped them bring a new resource to patients in need.
“Because of the fact that a lot of insurance companies now kind of across the board are allowing telehealth, which is either by telephone or video conference,” Suzanne Catholdi, the communications liaison for Wayne Behavioral Health said. “A lot of people who weren’t seen before now have more accessibility.”
Mental health facilities all over the country have been struggling to keep up with the rise of these mental health concerns, and many have also been utilizing telehealth services as a result.
Catholdi said younger people and college students being seen at Wayne Behavioral are taking advantage of the virtual services now offered if they aren’t already using their on-campus college therapists.
However wait times across the board for many mental health facilities are becoming problematic for those in need. For Strong Hospital in Rochester, they said over the summer that wait times for those seeking therapy reached over one year.
“Our mental health therapists, they need to be able to be available and be on top of the needs, and we need to be supportive of our medical staff as well,” Catholdi said about facilities falling behind.
“They lost that, they lost those contacts, they lost that structure, a lot of kids were at home alone…”
SUZANNE CATHOLDI
She emphasized that staff all around are “suffering,” so It’s important to keep working through the pandemic and keep schools open as a resource for those struggling.“There were a lot of kids who were struggling already, that really needed that contact in the school with the teachers and professors,” Catholdi said while talking about the effects the shutdowns had on students.
“When there’s nothing for people to do, and no support in place, and a big question mark day-to-day about what they’re doing,” Catholdi added. “It was a big disaster waiting to happen.”
She said that students and adults “lost that structure,” and it led to a huge uptick in mental health concerns. Now therapy has become a big point of discussion.
“I did start therapy, and it actually helped quite a lot,” Nesbitt said.
But Nesbitt also said that despite these concerns being more publicly talked about, some students aren’t opening up enough.
“I would recommend that help to anyone,” Nesbitt explained, “Those who may be going through something, but even if you’re just alive, it’s good to just have that outlet.”
As things continue to open up, and people adjust to a normal life after two years shut down, those mental health concerns continue to be analyzed. The Healthy Minds Study is still in the process of gathering data during this time, and more colleges are being enrolled to help diversify the results.
