Project Wellness is a club that focuses on promoting mental wellness and creating a community for students to destigmatize mental health at LSU.
The club has three pillars: community building, breaking the stigma and providing knowledge. Ariel Munholland, a senior studying kinesiology, expressed that Project Wellness is open to everyone and is a good place to network and build community.
“It’s such a good network,” Munholland said. “We have so many good events and people there. A lot of the people are STEM majors and are trying to become doctors and lawyers. It’s just a lot of people who know mental health is important. I think it is really important that we have the club.”
Project Wellness prides itself on having a welcoming atmosphere for students to build a community with. Caroline Marks, a senior studying sports administration, emphasizes the positive and welcoming environment that Project Wellness provides.
“I love how positive the atmosphere is. I love how welcoming everybody is. It really is just a safe place for anybody to come feel welcomed. It’s a place to have fun and have a little mental break from anything and everything going on,” Marks said.
One resource that distinguishes the club is the trainings it offers members, including suicide prevention training, wellness training and disaster and trauma relief training.
Project Wellness has various committees that help to create fun activities and events for members. Munholland is the fitness chair on the club’s executive board and highlights the connection between fitness and mental health.
“There’s a science behind it that it releases serotonin when you exercise and it boosts a whole bunch of receptors and stuff,” Munholland said. “It’s really good because it just makes you happy.”
Betsy Cao, a senior studying biological engineering, serves as the music chair for Project Wellness. Cao organizes different activities involving music to help members of the organization relax.
“Music holds a really important place in my heart and I know how it’s been used as a way for people to de-stress. It’s definitely a way I de-stress,” Cao said. “I come up with musical-related activities and ideas and I offer it to members. Our activity that we offered last semester, we would play excerpts of different types of music and we would have members draw what they felt or saw when they listened.”
Isabella Paul, a senior studying biology, founded LSU’s chapter of Project Wellness last year. She got the idea for the project after attending a conference for Alpha Epsilon Delta, a pre-medical honors society organization, her sophomore year.
Paul learned from Jose Llanas, a student who founded a Project Wellness club at the University of Las Vegas. Llanas inspired Paul to create her own chapter at LSU.
“We spent the entire summer talking about different aspects of the club and I really fell in love with the mission because there are just so many different things he thought of,” Paul said.
Paul expresses her main goal with the club is to cater towards those with mental health issues by helping break the stigma and provide a community.
“My main goal is addressing people with mental health. A lot of people with mental health have an issue with coming to club meetings because they’re going through a lot,” Paul said. “The other thing is the stigma associated with mental health. A lot of people don’t like admitting they have mental health problems, so they might join through Zoom rather than coming to the actual meeting.”
To find out more about the Project Wellness Club at LSU, follow their Instagram @project_wellness_lsu.
