University Medical Center and The University of Alabama Wellness and Work-Life partnered in August to provide a program to UA employees to help strengthen their mental fitness.
The month-long Mental Fitness Program taught techniques to manage stress, increase awareness and understanding of stress and its effects on mental and physical health, discover ways to maintain a healthy work-life balance and ways to adopt healthy behaviors to improve overall well-being.
The four weekly classes were titled “Understanding Stress,” “Tools and Techniques for a Balanced Mind,” “Achieving Work-Life Harmony” and “Thriving through Healthy Habits.” Dr. John Burkhardt, a clinical psychologist at UMC, helped teach the classes.
“Working with this program has created wonderful topics that focus on mental health, and we have received positive responses,” Burkhardt said. “In some ways, the biggest benefactor is me because I get to learn more about what it looks like to people to learn these techniques for mental health.”