Mental Health & Wellbeing Summit

#TakeCareUW
An image with a red circle around the words "Mental Health and Wellbeing Summit" with the dates March 11-12, 2021

The Mental Health & Wellbeing Summit is a series of workshops and activities for UW–Madison students to take a break and care for their mental and physical health. 

Welcome to the Summit!

#TakeCareUW Events

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Day One

An image of a woman, Dr. Joy Harden Bradford, in a blue shirt with her hands placed on the table in front of her

Developing your Mental Health Training Plan with Dr. Joy Harden Bradford

For any goal we’d like to achieve in life, we don’t just hope it will happen, we plan for it. Our mental health is no different. In this presentation by Dr. Joy Harden Bradford, licensed psychologist, speaker, and host of the wildly popular mental health podcast, Therapy for Black Girls, you’ll learn valuable tips and strategies for managing your mental health. 

Dr. Joy Harden Bradford is a licensed psychologist, speaker, and the host of the wildly popular mental health podcast, Therapy for Black Girls. She received her Bachelor’s degree in Psychology from Xavier University of Louisiana, her Master’s degree in Vocational Rehabilitation Counseling from Arkansas State, and her Ph.D. in Counseling Psychology from The University of Georgia. 

Her work focuses on making mental health topics more relevant and accessible for Black women and she specializes in creating spaces for Black women to have fuller and healthier relationships with themselves and others. 

She has been featured in O, The Oprah Magazine, Bustle, Huffington Post, Black Enterprise, Women’s Health, BuzzFeed, Teen Vogue, and Essence. Dr. Joy lives in Atlanta, GA with her husband and two sons.

Day Two: Friday, March 12

Drop-in Meditation

Take a moment for yourself during this live guided mindfulness meditation practice with UW Center for Healthy Minds collaborator Stephanie Wagner. All are welcome, whether you’re new to meditation or have previous experience with the practice.

Drop-in Meditation

Take a moment to de-stress and reflect during this live guided mindfulness meditation practice with Scott Anderson from the UW Center for Healthy Minds. All are welcome, whether you’re new to meditation or have previous experience with the practice.

Mindfulness for Boosting Resilience and Lowering Stress

How can we use mindfulness to manage stress and be more resilient in the face of everyday challenges? This session will demystify meditation and explore the topic in a practical, experiential way you can build upon and draw from at any time. Join Dr. John Dunne, professor of Asian Languages and Cultures at UW–Madison, and faculty at the Center for Healthy Minds, to help us get started.

Flourishing in Contentious Times

How can we find ways to flourish amid division and hardship? In this session, Dr. Tony Chambers, Director of Equity, Inclusion and Innovation at the Center for Healthy Minds and Instructor for The Art and Science of Human Flourishing course at UW–Madison, will explore skills for students to flourish. All students are welcome to attend this session, but it will be designed with BIPOC students in mind and will focus on the challenges, opportunities and conditions necessary for flourishing to occur. 

Go the %$#& to Sleep!

Sleep is important, but why does it seem so hard to do well? Join experts from Mental Health Services at UHS for the lowdown on the impacts of poor sleep, how it works, and helpful and unhelpful coping skills for improving sleep. Bonus: There may even be a bedtime story (!).

Am I Just Bad at This?!: How Procrastination Actually Works

Join UHS Mental Health Services experts for a deep dive into procrastination – why it happens and what to do about it. Students attending this session will improve their ability to manage distractions that impair focus, pick up organization and planning strategies to boost productivity and efficiency, and get appropriate support when needed.

Leading & Living Well: Become a Peer Wellness Coach

Join this session to learn more about a new peer wellness coaching program at UW–Madison. Centered around the seven aspects of wellbeing (healthy, safety, meaning, connection, growth, achievement and resiliency), peer wellness coaching’s guiding philosophy is that each person is their own wellbeing expert. When coached, they will find answers within themselves. During this session, we’ll talk about our peer wellness coaching program as a whole and introduce ways you can get involved – as a coach and participant!

Your Inner Critic is Sus: Overcoming Imposter Phenomenon

How can you tell when your inner self-narrative and your abilities are based in reality or the result of negative thought patterns? Led by experts from UHS Mental Health Services, this session will explore how to recognize  thoughts, emotions, and behaviors that contribute to imposter phenomenon and learn skills for reducing it.

On-Demand Events

Suicide Prevention Training for UW-Madison Students: Recognize, Respond, Refer

This on-demand session will help you learn to recognize warning signs for emotional distress in peers, practice responding in a supportive way, and understand how to make a referral to free, confidential resources for students. Suicide Prevention Training for UW–Madison Students is an online program that builds capacity in UW–Madison students to intervene, prevent suicide and support mental health in their peers. This training does not offer immediate support to students in distress. Instead, it prepares students to be better able to support their peers in the future. 

This training contains four parts and takes about 75 minutes to complete in its entirety, though students can start and stop the modules at any time. Each part contains audio voiceover. Transcripts are available on Canvas and within the training.

Access the training

Breath of Spring: Guided Meditation in the Garden

Take a 10-minute break from your day to calm your mind with this brief, guided meditation session. Recorded during warmer weather in the Allen Centennial Garden on the UW–Madison campus, this meditation walks you through different strategies of mindfulness – such as noticing your breath and body – as well as invites you to explore well wishes to yourself and others with a sense of safety and ease.

Watch the guided meditation