Center for Student Mental Health and Well-being Blog

Category: General Information

Mindful Eating

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Part of mental health and well-being in college includes looking at mindful eating. Mindful eating is being aware of what you are consuming and being attentive during the act of eating. While this is easier said than done, one Netflix special may make it a little bit easier to process.

Cooked on Netflix is a short series looking at how food can shape our world. The narrator and host, Michael Pollan, is an acclaimed writer who is known for taking extra steps when doing his writing. In his series Cooked, he meets with masters of the field, to take a deeper look at the relationship cultivated between themselves and food. Between old-world cheese-making and the time and care put into making bread dough, it can be an inspiration to take a closer look at your food.

As a college student who puts effort into everything other than cooking and as a person who hates to cook – I found this series inspirational. Something I’ve always wanted to improve on was what foods I was consuming and how I was consuming them. Getting home in the evening after classes and work, sometimes I make the quickest thing, so I can just simply eat. I am not taking the time to make a meal out of what I am eating and just consuming it as quickly as possible instead. Watching Michael Pollan talk with people who were so passionate about the time and energy put towards what they were making, made me want to take a second look at how I eat.


If you’re interested, check out the trailer here or visit the resources below to find out more on mindful eating.

*Some other great sources that explain more about mindful eating can be found below!

  1. Mindful Self-Talk Leads to Mindful Eating
  2. UCookbook from CampusWell
  3. 8 Steps to Mindful Eating
  4. Mindful Eating: The Art of Presence While You Eat

*Thank you to Meredith Raasio for contributing to this article and finding the above resources.

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What is the Healthy Minds Survey?

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The Healthy Minds Survey is a campus-wide survey that will be available to Michigan Tech students until October 15th at 5 pm. The Healthy Minds Survey is a questionnaire that was launched in 2007 in order to examine mental health, service utilization, and related issues among undergraduate and graduate students— it now is used by over 400 colleges and universities in what is known as the Healthy Minds Network for Research on Adolescent and Young Adult Mental Health.

What can I expect from the survey?

Participation is easy and rewarding, only taking 25 minutes. The survey has a bunch of multiple-choice questions that were interesting and thought-provoking to answer. The survey starts off with some generic questions such as gender, age, sexual orientation, and race/ethnicity. Following this, it asks questions about your socioeconomic status, food security, and a plethora of questions about education and college life. Other questions involve citizenship status, disability status, military status, and religious affiliation. Many of these questions have an “other” or “prefer not to answer” option, and none of them are required. 

In the next section, the survey asks Likert scale as well as multiple-choice questions about mental and emotional health. Some of these questions involve suicide, eating disorders, sexual assault, discrimination, substance use, exercise, sleep, COVID-19, and guns. Next, it asks questions about service and support such as therapy and medications. Building on top of that, the survey then asks about your knowledge and beliefs about those services as well as your own knowledge about mental health. It also asks a few questions about how you would handle difficult situations on campus. Then, the survey asks about the mental health climate and culture on campus. At the end of the survey, it asks you if you would like personalized feedback on your answers, which can help you understand how you are in relation to mental health challenges.

All of the questions are confidential and voluntary. Therefore, if you do not feel like answering one, you do not have to. If you would like to view the questions before taking them, you can view the 2021-2022 questionnaire on their website. By taking this survey, you agree to become a part of a de-identified national and aggregate data set. Typically, data is also blinded in relation to schools, except in cases where researchers wish to compare institutions, are doing a regional analysis, or wish to compare other mental health programs. Here is the most exciting part of this survey: upon finishing the survey, you will be entered into a sweepstake to win 1 of 2 $500 prizes or 1 of 10 $100 prizes. The drawing will be held in the summer of 2022 by the researchers at the University of Michigan School of Public Health. Winners will be notified by email.

How is my data utilized?

Universities that participate in the Healthy Minds Survey receive customized data sets, data reports, access to the interactive data interface data reports, and even an Economic analysis of mental health services. Universities may use this data in a number of ways. According to their page on benefits, the The Healthy Minds Survey may be used to:

  • Support and strengthen Grant application
  • To advocate for mental health services and programs on campus
  • To evaluate existing programs 
  • To assess the need for programs and services 
  • To assess the training programs or the need for training programs
  • To raise awareness of mental health and campus resources
  • To make comparisons with peer institutions
  • To educate and inform the community about the state of Student Mental Health on campus
  • To inform the Board of Trustees about students attitudes and behaviors regarding mental health
  • To give presentations to faculty and staff

Michigan Tech is in general very interested in the well-being of its students, but has three important questions in mind for this survey: 

  • How has COVID-19 affected our campus community’s well-being? 
  • With respect to well-being, what are some high-risk areas that our students are reporting?
  • How does our Healthy Minds Survey differ this year from 2018?

Now that you know what it is, what to expect, as well as how your data is used, please remember to take the survey!

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What is NAMI?

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The National Alliance on Mental Illness or NAMI for short is just that.

Providing support, education, signs/symptoms, and much more, NAMI focuses on providing support to those who are affected by mental illness.

Recently on our Instagram page, we put up some stories with questions from NAMI’s StigmaFree quiz. Our goal was to help engage our student population and get people thinking about what they can do to support their friends, family, and community members who are affected. NAMI is a great resource that we wanted to make available during this time, as it is Suicide Awareness Month. Educating ourselves and others and providing resources is a small step we can take to help build a StigmaFree environment on campus. Not only does NAMI offer a quiz to help individuals think about their actions, but they also have an online pledge that can be taken. This pledge allows you to help facilitate the change in which NAMI is hoping to achieve – ending stigma and creating positive environments for those affected by mental illness.

It is rare that any of us are perfect and will walk around without a bias on the occasion, but participating in the quiz and taking the pledge, can help us put a little more accountability on one another to work on creating safe and inviting environments around our campus. If you would like to learn more about who NAMI is and what they do, go to this link.

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Capture Your Adventure MTU: Week 8

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For our eigth and final week of #captureyouradventuremtu, the theme is landscapes. Students have until 8pm on Sunday EST to post pictures of any landscapes they’ve seen!

To go with the theme of landscapes our spotlight of the week is focused on Keweenaw Land Trust. This organization promotes and protects the quality of our resources around us in the Upper Peninsula. The graphic we’ve shared on our socials can be found below. More information on all that the Keweenaw Land Trust does and has to offer can be found at the following website.

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Capture Your Adventure MTU: Week 7

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For our seventh week of #captureyouradventuremtu, the theme is sunrise/sunset. Students have until 8pm on Sunday EST to post pictures of any sunrises or sunsets they’ve seen!

To go with the theme of sunrise/sunset our spotlight of the week is focused on Michigan’s Keweenaw Peninsula Visitors Bureau. The graphics we’ve shared on our socials can be found below. These are a few different locations throughout the Keweenaw that are awesome for sunrise or sunset viewing. More information on all that the Visitors Bureau has to offer can be found at the following website.

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Capture Your Adventure MTU: Week 6

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For our sixth week of #captureyouradventuremtu, the theme is campfire. Students have until 8pm on Sunday EST to post pictures of any campfires they’ve had in the past or in a safe zone! We asked this week that students use caution with making fires, as DNR has cautioned the high risk for fire danger in both the Upper and Lower Peninnsula.

To go with the theme of campfire our spotlight of the week was focused on MTU’s Student Leadership and Involvement Office or SLI for short. The graphic we shared on our socials can be found below. This picture was taken at the “S’More than a Feeling” event hosted by SLI this week. More information on all that the SLI offers can be found on the following website.

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Capture Your Adventure MTU: Week 5

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For our fifth week of #captureyouradventuremtu, the theme was outdoor skill. Students had until 8pm on Sunday EST to post pictures of any outdoor skill they had participated in!

To go with the theme of outdoor skill our spotlight of the week was focused on MTU’s Outdoor Adventure Program or OAP for short. The graphics we shared on our socials can be found below. More information on all that the OAP offers can be found on the following website.

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Capture Your Adventure MTU: Week 4

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For our fourth week of #captureyouradventuremtu, the theme was outdoor activity. Students had until 8pm on Sunday EST to post pictures of any outdoor activities they had participated in!

To go with the theme of outdoor activity our spotlight of the week was focused on MTU’s Army ROTC students who had participated in the challenge. The graphics we shared on our socials can be found below. More information on what the Army ROTC student group does can be found on the following website.

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Capture Your Adventure MTU: Week 3

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For our third week of #captureyouradventuremtu, the theme is wildlife. Students have until 8pm on Sunday EST to post pictures of any wildlife they have seen!

To go with the theme of wildlife our spotlight of the week is to focused on the DNR and their information on “Managing your Resources” for wildlife. The graphic we shared on our socials can be found below. More information on resource managing and woldlife can be found on the following website.

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Capture Your Adventure MTU: Week 2

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For our second week of #captureyouradventuremtu, the theme is parks. Students have until 8pm on Sunday EST to post pictures of any county, state, or national parks they’ve attended.

To go with the theme of parks our spotlight of the week is to focused camping etiquette. The graphic we shared on our socials can be found below. More information on the camping safety and etiquette can be found on the following website.

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