“Mas Amor” was an event held on the Edinburg campus on Sept. 26 where students were able to learn about self-care and campus resources.
Program Manager for Talk About it Texas with Healthy Future of Texas Paris Rangel said her organization collaborated with UT Health RGV School of Medicine to bring this event to UTRGV. She expressed what self-care means to her.
“So self-care is just taking care of yourself, whatever that looks like. Whatever makes you feel happy, whatever makes you feel good.” Rangel said. “For you to be able to move on, with the stresses of life and school. So that you can be happy and make sure that you’re healthy.”
By creating a safe space, she believes students will be able to connect with UTRGV’s various organizations to learn more about what is available on campus.
“That’s why we’re here,” Rangel said. “We’re here to support them and not only provide them with sexual reproductive health education, but the resources that are also available for them [students].So that they can take advantage of that because a lot of students don’t know about these resources.”
Program Coordinator for Talk About It campus conversation Vianca Vieyra said self-care is something everyone should practice and you don’t necessarily have to be depressed to work on it.
“I think that we should focus on self-care to reduce the chances of anxiety and depression from occurring in a person.” Vieyra said. “So this is why the activities that we have today, they’re meant to provide students with some sort of coping skill that they can practice to hopefully reduce the chances of depression and anxiety, especially on a college campus.”
She listed many of the organizations that were present during this event.
“We have counseling, I know we have Student Rights and Responsibilities.” Vieyra said. “We have Student Accessibility Services, we have student organizations like Active Minds, Parent Success, Texas Rising, Access Esperanza, our clinic initself and our campus conversations, which focuses primarily on the sexual reproductive health aspect of health.”
The next “Mas Amor” Self-Care event will take place at 11 a.m. – 1 p.m. Oct. 12, at the UTRGV Brownsville campus Music, Science and Learning Center building.
This is Timothy Chapman for Vaquero Radio
