“Breathe in suffering, breathe out compassion.”

Dr. Miriam Cameron, a registered nurse and faculty member at the University of Minnesota’s Center for Spirituality and Healing (CSH), used this phrase to explain Tonglen meditation. This form of meditation is one of the practices Cameron teaches in her class, Traditional Tibetan Medicine: Ethics, Spirituality and Healing.

Dr. Tenzin Namdul, a Tibetan medical doctor and faculty member at CSH, aids Cameron in teaching the course. Together they wrote “Tibetan Medicine and You: A Path to Wellbeing, Better Health, and Joy.” The textbook was published in January 2020 with a blessing from the Dalai Lama, the highest Tibetan spiritual leader.

Minnesota is home to the second-largest Tibetan American refugee community in the United States, with dense populations concentrated in Minneapolis.

Tibetan medicine is focused on individualized care with customized treatment regimens, diet and behavioral models. Cameron said she believes Tibetan medicine is far ahead of mental health care, such as therapy, in “healing” an individual’s mind. Talking through a problem or feeling about something may not always be the right fit for an individual’s needs, she said.

“Healing people doesn’t necessarily mean pharmaceutical drugs,” Namdul said.

Spring is a great time to evaluate which relationships, behaviors and thoughts are toxic for an individual, Cameron said.

“We need to throw out the garbage,” she said. “If I am leading a happy, healthy life, I have more energy to reach out and care about other people and do what I can to help. But if I’m just focused on myself, that’s a very unhappy life and people have to take care of me.”

Spring is an important time for examining how an individual’s life is changing internally and externally, especially in regions like the Midwest with long winters, Namdul said. “Airing out” your mind after a year of uncertainty can help clean the mind and body of lingering negativity.

Namdul’s advice to students is to “recognize the changes that are happening to oneself and outside in the environment and to use that energy and power to help your academic performance as well as your health.”

Claire Stuckey, a graduate student and recently retired staff member at the University of Minnesota’s Law School Library, said many natural temperature changes occur with the seasons.

“It’s pretty hard to go through life and not get out of balance,” she said.

Stuckey is re-taking the Tibetan medicine class again 15 years later to implement these practices into her part-time health coaching and psychotherapy.

“Tibetan medicine is very adept at helping people realize their true nature and to be more aware in a holistic way of how their true nature might be moving in or out of balance. And then it teaches how to intervene and rebalance,” she said.

To help individuals achieve happiness, Tibetan medicine teaches them to mentally heal and transform the three “mental poisons”: anger, confusion and greed. Engaging in these forms of negative thinking means an individual will most likely make choices that negatively impact their mind and body, Cameron said.

Contemplating how to create happiness and recognize what creates suffering are the first steps toward cultivating a healthy life, she said.

Orianna Olson, a graduate student currently taking the class, said her biggest takeaway was recognizing she has the ability to choose to live a happy and healthy life despite what is happening around her.

The use of “constitutions,” or energies, has helped her better understand herself, she said. In Tibetan medicine, there are three energies: heat, cooling and movement. Individuals have all three, with generally one more dominant than the others, Olson said.

“I equate the constitutions to our personality tests,” she said.

Tibetan medicine focuses on balancing these energies, such as doing hot yoga if one’s cold energy is too strong or making different food choices.

“We’re holistic beings,” Stuckey said. “Tibetan medicine is so integrative in terms of addressing all aspects of who we are, how we behave with the literal taking care of ourselves physically and with diet, or emotionally with our state of mind.”

The COVID-19 pandemic has introduced new ethical dilemmas for research at the University of Minnesota, prompting conversations among faculty.

This year the University’s annual Research Ethics Week focused on maintaining and promoting ethics amid the impacts of COVID-19. One of the presentations included in ethics week focused on how the pandemic affected research design and conduction.

“I think [the pandemic] will shape ethics in research by really clarifying ‘How do we weigh competing benefits for patients when resources are limited?’ And that’s exactly what COVID brought to the healthcare system in general,” medicine and pharmacology professor Dr. Douglas Yee said.

When the pandemic hit, there was a scramble to obtain enough personal protective equipment among researchers in hospitals and labs, he said. The onset of the pandemic also affected clinical trials; University human trials and clinics were put on hold. While some were able to go virtual or restart after a few months, others are still waiting to resume, Yee said.

“The pandemic has shown us where all the cracks are,” he said.

The largest ethical questions being discussed among researchers are how to address inequities in health care and find the best way to care for patients quickly, according to Susan Wolf, a professor in the Department of Medicine and Law School.

“A pandemic like this one really forces us to think about how to combine research, clinical care and public health practice,” she said. “Normally those are the three distinct areas of law and policy but in a pandemic, we really need to combine them.”

With a large portion of hospital space and resources going toward the treatment of COVID-19 patients, there is less space for clinical trials.

Epidemiology and community health professor Dr. Michael Oakes said the biggest decision for research at the University was to hibernate or halt in-person research. The University’s Institutional Review Board (IRB), which reviews research proposals to sufficiently protect trial participants, created a five-tier system to categorize studies by weighing their risks and rewards.

Tier one research deals with the most life-saving and urgent trials and tier five reflects the least urgent research. If researchers disagree with their study’s categorization, they can explain to the IRB why they believe the work belongs in a more pressing tier.

When the Federal Drug Administration approved convalescent plasma for treating COVID-19 at the beginning of the pandemic, researchers at the University wanted to continue with their research to test the treatment’s efficacy or harm before using it to treat patients, Oakes said.

Once the FDA approved this treatment, researchers encountered a moral dilemma of conducting a trial where they were withholding an approved treatment that could potentially benefit patients, said Dr. Claudia Cohn, an associate professor in the Department of Laboratory Medicine and Pathology.

“Morally and ethically a lot of people are saying we need to figure out how to be more like the United Kingdom or Canada,” she said. Both countries have centralized systems that were designed to implement convalescent plasma trials while trying to understand its benefits. Each trial had a set question to answer. Whereas, in the United States significantly fewer patients were enrolled and several different tests were used, making it hard to compare results.

“It’s been a mess,” Cohn said.

The University of Minnesota’s annual Rare Disease Day seminar this year, held at the end of February, explained how patients with rare diseases can utilize telehealth services nationally and internationally.

The University houses the Rare Disease Advisory Council (RDAC), a support network for parents of children with rare diseases. The University has helped support families in dealing with rare diseases such as adrenoleukodystrophy, ectodermal dysplasia and mitochondrial disease complex III, among others. Global Rare Disease Day is held every year on the last day of February.

“There is interest in potentially developing web-based testing that kids might be able to do in terms of neurodevelopmental assessments,” said Dr. Paul Orchard, Department of Pediatrics professor at the University and Rare Disease Day panelist.

Of approximately 7,000 existing rare diseases, Orchard focuses on diseases present in children. The goal is to establish the University as one of the national centers of excellence that cares for children with these rare disorders, he said.

Adrenoleukodystrophy

Cassie Groh and her son Brock have been working with Dr. Troy Lund, Department of Pediatrics associate professor at the University, since 2018. There is no treatment for the cerebral form of adrenoleukodystrophy (ALD) that Brock has. Due to family history, Groh was tested and able to identify Brock’s disease, a progressive inflammatory disease of the brain, early on.

“Brock was lucky and we caught his [disease] before any symptoms showed up,” Groh said, “We’re very lucky.”

Historically, children would lose their lives within two to five years of diagnosis. The only way known to stop the cerebral progression of this form of ALD is through a bone marrow transplant. The University has been doing transplants for ALD for 27 years, Lund said.

“We’re probably one of the largest transplant centers in the world for ALD,” Orchard said.

Brock turned six during his transplant in 2019. A month after the transplant, he made almost daily appointments to the University for several months. He is still adrenaline insufficient and will have to take steroids for the rest of his life. But in terms of his transplant, he is doing very well, Groh said.

In some circumstances, especially with the cerebral form, by the time someone with ALD has enough symptoms to be diagnosed, it is too late for help. That is why there is a large focus on newborn screening among the medical community, Orchard said. About 20 states currently utilize newborn ALD screening.

During her time with the University, Groh created a nonprofit, X out ALD, with three other families in Minnesota. So, far they have raised over $130,000 for the University’s ALD center and Lund’s labs.

“The ability for [the staff] to connect with the kids and make these kids feel special and that your family matters is really important,” Groh said.

Ectodermal dysplasia

Karl Nelsen and his 11-year-old daughter Sammi both have a rare disease. Ectodermal dysplasia can cause changes in skin and nails, loss of hair, dental challenges and issues with body temperature regulation. Sammi has been working with the University’s Department of Dermatology on mitigating hair loss and caring for her skin.

“Kids with variants of it, they don’t sweat. So, body temperature regulation can be really challenging, especially when you’re getting into playtime or during gym or if you want to be in sports,” Nelsen said.

Nelsen got dentures when he was 5 years old; he made the transition to get implants at the University in his early twenties. Bone grafting and implants were a big part of the process, he said.

“It’s an ongoing process,” Nelsen said. “It’s not fun but it’s better than the alternative of not having teeth.” He has had to have some teeth replacements and revisions over the past 20 years.

Nelsen said he knows his daughter will likely need oral restoration after she loses all of her baby teeth. Scientists have not yet discovered what specific gene caused his and Sammi’s genetic changes.

Nelsen has been a member of the Rare Disease Advisory Council since its conception when the governor signed it into legislation in 2019. The Council helps to build connections within the community and among other organizations interested in rare diseases. Nelsen said he chose to get involved with the RDAC because of his struggle with insurance companies.

“People with rare conditions, we really struggle with insurance companies,” Nelsen said. “Our restorations are not often covered by medical insurance plans, so we end up getting bills for like $100,000 in order to try to get implants.”

Medical insurance companies call restorations a dental problem and dental insurance companies call them a cosmetic issue, Nelsen said.

In response to this, Nelsen helped write a national bill called Ensuring Lasting Smiles Act. The bill lost momentum when the pandemic hit and attention turned to COVID-19 relief. He said he will introduce the legislation again soon.

Mitochondrial disease complex III

Panelist Stephanie Tomlinson shared her story as a parent of a child with a rare disease at the University’s Rare Disease Day panel. Her son, Ted Perron, is a patient with mitochondrial disease complex III, which is a genetic cousin to muscular dystrophy. Perron’s cells are not able to properly produce energy, Tomlinson said. Sometimes Perron will sleep between 17 to 19 hours a day.

He was diagnosed with this rare metabolism error in 2005 and given a life expectancy of about 10 years. He became a research patient for the National Institute of Health in 2013 where he was given several different medications to subdue his side effects so medical professionals could learn more about his mitochondria. He is now 21 years old.

“Currently there’s no effective treatment for this disease,” Tomlinson said. “Genetically, he’s the only patient they’ve recorded in the United States with this exact defect. So, his care is really more about treating the symptoms that pop up.”

Tomlinson was introduced to the RDAC by council administrator Erica Barnes.

“[The RDAC] helped me personally be able to share all the things that I’ve learned, to be a resource and be able to share all the things I’ve learned and help other parents find their voice and advocate for their child,” Tomlinson said.

The work of the RDAC has helped address where Minnesota is behind other states for patient care. One of the issues Tomlinson said she is passionate about is the transition of patients from pediatric care to adult care. Rare disease adult patient care facilities are generally unprepared for those lucky enough to outlive pediatric care, she said.

Perron’s care recently moved to the Mayo Clinic after he aged out of the M Health Fairview University of Minnesota Masonic Children’s Hospital. It is a frustrating transition during which parents watch their child’s health slide backward, Tomlinson said. She and Orchard are working together to collaborate with hospital groups to improve transitional care.

Tomlinson said she hopes the virtual healthcare advancements made due to COVID-19 remain once the pandemic ends. Telehealth saves a parent from taking time off work, hiring a caregiver to help with transportation and traveling to other cities.

“I don’t think people realize, but [telehealth] will go away unless we have some sort of legislation put in place,” she said.

Correction: A previous version of this story incorrectly stated where Ted Perron received care.

The joint House and Senate Higher Education Finance and Policy Committee at the Minnesota Legislature met virtually Tuesday to interview and recommend their picks for the University of Minnesota’s Board of Regents election.

The committee considered choices initially recommended by the Regent Candidate Advisory Council. The committee recommended two finalists from each of the 1st, 4th, 6th and 7th Congressional Districts. The candidates include four women and two people of color, one of whom could be the first Native American regent to serve on the board.

Brandon Alkire, running in the 4th Congressional District, said he wants to be a University regent to help underrepresented communities strengthen their voices and help the University recruit and maintain diverse students.

“I believe that we need this voice on the board to help diversify current voices,” he said during the meeting Tuesday.

“I’m looking forward to seeing the first Native American who is going to be elected,” Rep. Mohamud Noor, DFL-Minneapolis, said. This is an important moment for reflection because the University sits on Native American land, he said.

Running opposite of Alkire is Karen Schanfied. She said her appreciation for higher education and teaching caused her to run.

“I just really want to help a place I care about tremendously,” she said.

Regent Michael Hsu, the 6th Congressional District board member, is the only member considered for reelection. He wants to continue work on making standardized test scores optional when applying to the University and keeping tuition and costs low for students.

“We need to make sure the University is serving the needs of public Minnesota, especially the kids,” Hsu said.

This is the last of a six-year term for Regents Richard Beeson and Thomas Anderson. They did not run for re-election this term. Regent Randy Simonson began to run for reelection before withdrawing from the race, which moderator Jim du Bois announced at the regent candidate forum in late January.

Noor used the interview portion of Tuesday night’s meeting to ensure each candidate is prioritizing diversity, equity and inclusion.

“It’s something that many institutions struggle with,” he said. “We have to support diversifying the staff, ensuring that we have a diverse student body and diversity of thought.”

The House and Senate will meet in joint convention later this month to elect regents.

The eight recommended candidates are Val Aarsvold and Ruth Johnson for the 1st Congressional District; Brandon Alkire and Karen Schanfield for the 4th Congressional District; Michael Hsu and Kodi Verhalen for the 6th Congressional District; and Doug Huebsch and Michael Yost for the 7th Congressional District.

Jossy Miller said she was managing her eating disorder well until the pandemic started.

“Losing weight and food was my coping skill for handling everything going on in the world and everything going on in my life,” the third-year University of Minnesota student said. Miller has been on leave from the University since October.

She said the pandemic made it easier to get away with not eating, as she was not seeing her friends and family as frequently. By the time she moved to residential treatment and left her roommates — who she was initially close with — she was not speaking with them, largely because of her eating disorder.

A majority of the people she has talked to at Melrose Center, an eating disorder treatment clinic in the Twin Cities area, attribute the worsening of their eating disorders to the pandemic, she said.

There has been an increase in disordered eating among those with a history and those with active eating disorders during the pandemic, according to Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences professor Dr. Emily Pisetsky. There are many intersections between food and social interactions; so if someone is avoiding food, they can end up isolating themselves, she said.

Eating disorders are described as “disorders of disconnect,” said Tamara Pryor, EDCare executive director of clinical and research, in an email to the Minnesota Daily. Virtual classes alongside the added stress of the pandemic have created a greater sense of disconnect for students with eating disorders, she said.

EDCare, a program with multiple eating disorder treatment centers, has observed that the overwhelming navigation of new experiences in college can cause people to turn to food, or away from it, to temporarily distract from uncomfortable emotions.

While eating disorders can develop at any age, they develop with a greater frequency between the ages of 18 and 21, Pryor said in the email.

Zoom classes, Zoom meals

Quarantine diets became a widespread trend during the pandemic. This caused some people with eating disorders to personalize comments about weight gain as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic and start to worry that it is a problem for them, according to Melrose Clinical Director Dr. Heather Gallivan. When University students are struggling with an eating disorder, Boynton typically refers them to Melrose.

Anna Enfield, a fourth-year student, said she felt especially targeted when TikTok’s algorithm tailored her suggested videos to consist primarily of titles like “how to lose that quarantine weight” and “how to stay healthy after the holidays.” She said she gets those types of suggested videos less now and attempts to block them out when they appear on her feed.

Enfield said her eating disorder got serious last spring. Attempting to balance eight hours of daily treatment with school work affected her grades; thinking about food takes up a lot of brain space, and it is easy to rationalize that a grade is not as important as looking a certain way, so she focused on not eating, she said.

Those with eating disorders often report spending 80%-90% of their day thinking about food or their body, Gallivan said.

For inpatient programs such as those at Melrose, patients who are in college are advised to put all of their focus into their treatment. When Miller started inpatient treatment, she dropped her classes. She plans to start taking classes again this summer.

Melrose counselors suggested Enfield eat meals over Zoom with family and friends to help her engage in social eating.

“It doesn’t help — it didn’t help me at least. I know a lot of people it did help,” she said. “But for me, it just turned into me watching myself eat and being very critical of that.”

With almost all mental health services and universities doing some — if not all — counseling or therapy sessions virtually, students can spend a lot of time staring at themselves in a little box on their screens. It is never a flattering light, Enfield said. However, because Zoom only shows faces, many people with eating disorders spend less time worrying about the public seeing their bodies every day, Pisetsky said.

As a provider, Gallivan said one drawback of virtual sessions is that she loses out on observations and nonverbal cues.

Lucy Murphy, a fourth-year student at the University, said she realized she was using the pandemic as an excuse to avoid getting groceries. She was referred to Melrose this past May after a doctor’s visit to Boynton. The entirety of her eating disorder treatment has been taking place during the pandemic.

Murphy mentioned her eating disorder as a concern to a counselor at Boynton two years ago, but it was not seen as a prevalent enough concern at the time to refer her to outside help. Her eating disorder intensified during the pandemic, she said.

For out-of-state students like Murphy, roommates or partners can provide a social environment and support system. Those who are not close with their roommates, or do not have any, might not participate in social eating or other social activities. This can allow eating disorders to fly under the radar, Pisetsky said.

As a nursing student, Murphy has a busy schedule, which made managing an eating schedule more difficult.

“This past semester came in like a freight train. Going through an eating disorder during that time was really, really difficult because my schoolwork definitely suffered,” she said. “I wasn’t eating enough, and there wasn’t a ton of support in the program for it, except like, ‘You just need to get over it and get back into the game.’”

Coping using socially-distanced strategies

For some, staying at home during the pandemic has helped them manage their eating disorders.

When fourth-year student Dara McCluskey went home after her first year at the University, her parents discovered how much weight she had lost. After that, she started receiving treatment until last summer when she had to leave Melrose. McCluskey has not received any treatment during the pandemic but said she has plans to make an appointment soon.

Before the pandemic, spending all day on campus allowed McCluskey to rationalize not eating during the day for lack of access to food. She said staying home has helped her manage her eating disorder by eliminating excuses to avoid eating. It has also improved her mental health and allowed her to concentrate better on schoolwork, she said.

For patients at Melrose, families and visitors are currently not allowed into the clinic. Melrose operates as a congregate living space where people are encouraged to get out of their rooms and participate in social activities such as yoga, skills sessions and counseling appointments.

Creative outlets can be a way to help improve mental health during the pandemic, Pisetsky said.

Third-year student Kai Kelley said cooking has become very important to his mental health during the pandemic. Being able to cook for himself and knowing what he is putting in his body has helped him maintain healthy eating habits.

Another creative outlet has been Kelley’s participation in his roommate’s photography. It allows him to utilize his own love of fashion and for positive images of himself to be featured in the photos, he said.

“It’s basically exposure therapy, which is good in itself but also very challenging,” he said.

During the pandemic, many people have taken on creative methods for coping with their eating disorders. There are Instagram and Facebook groups for people to interact with or do supported eating times over Zoom, Pisetsky said.

Not just a “white women disorder”

“[Eating disorders] really don’t discriminate; they can affect everybody,” Pisetsky said. “But it’s so ingrained in our culture that it’s an affluent, white woman disorder.”

Misconceptions about eating disorders can lead to fewer diagnoses, treatment options and pathways to getting help, Chelsea Kronengold, National Eating Disorders Association’s communications manager, said in an email to the Daily.

It is important to challenge systemic biases and share stories from all backgrounds in a field where marginalized communities continue to be underrepresented, Kronengold said.

The demographics of those seeking treatment are slowly shifting, Gallivan said. Melrose has seen an increase in patients from a Somali background. Melrose dieticians go to a nearby Somali market to ensure there is access to food that is palatable to their patients.

EDCare has a Diversity, Equity and Inclusion Committee in place to ensure clinicians are continuously being educated to provide support for people from all identities that seek treatment, committee member Grace Filiss said in an email to the Daily.

While telehealth sessions are easier for some people, many lack adequate technology, Wi-Fi access or a private space to do virtual sessions.

“We have seen patients resort to signing into treatment from their cars, parks and other unique locations to gain privacy for their treatment process,” Filiss said in the email.

There can be many barriers for individuals seeking treatment. Not everyone who has an eating disorder ends up at a clinic for a number of reasons: the stigmas around eating disorders, not having resources, a distrust of the medical field’s treatment of ethnic minorities or not having time.

Black people, Indigenous people and people of color are half as likely as white people are to be diagnosed with an eating disorder or receive treatment, according to the National Association of Anorexia Nervosa and Associated Disorders. In addition, Asian American college students report higher levels of body dissatisfaction than their peers report.

“When we look at the intersections of identity, acknowledging the whole person, they are more likely to achieve recovery,” Filiss said in the email.

The epidemiological studies used to identify eating disorders ask questions focused on “ideal” body types women primarily identify with, Pisetsky said. There can be cultural shame surrounding eating disorders for men and people of color.

Melrose does outreach with various groups, such as its yearly presence at Twin Cities Pride, to raise awareness and educate groups on identifying and treating eating disorders.

The Emily Program, a national eating disorder treatment program with locations in Minnesota, works to inform healthcare providers and schools about how to identify and treat eating disorders. Outreach usually takes place in communities, but the program is unable to do a lot in outside communities right now due to COVID-19 safety concerns, Dr. Scott Crow, The Emily Program’s chief research officer and psychiatry professor at the University, said.

Recently, The Emily Program has mostly observed people who previously had symptoms of an eating disorder that were worsened by the pandemic. However, Crow is convinced that they have not yet seen the full impact of the pandemic on eating disorders.

Boynton Health is reporting a 25% decrease in the number of new students registering for Boynton’s mental health services in fall 2020 compared to fall 2019.

Some, including Boynton’s Interim Director Dr. Matt Hanson, have said the difficulty of connecting with a mental health professional online for the first time or not having access to a private space for telehealth appointments may deter students. This is despite the fact, however, that overall enrollment this fall remained similar to the previous year’s.

Despite a decrease in new intakes, Boynton saw a 15% increase of return visits since fall 2019, Hanson said.

Sarah Thorstenson, a fourth-year student at the University, has been seeing a nurse practitioner at Boynton for over two years who she continues to meet with virtually. After working with a crisis counselor in December whom she had never met before, Thorstenson said she understood that it might be hard for someone new to connect with a professional online.

“I feel like it just kind of takes time to build a rapport with whoever you’re seeing,” she said.

In response to the pandemic, Boynton introduced new ways to continue offering mental health care to students from a distance such as lifting session limits, utilizing telehealth appointments and offering online workshops, according to Hanson. After the original hurdle of getting out-of-state students access to mental health services, Boynton was able to reconnect with those students virtually.

Thorstenson said she prefers her appointments online. Having to find and pay for parking was an inconvenience for her, she said. Telehealth grants her more flexibility and allows her to remain in the comfort of her home.

In contrast, Student Counseling Services (SCS), which provides shorter-term counseling in comparison to Boynton’s therapy services, saw a small increase in new student treatment in the fall.

“It’s not like [students] finish their finals, and they don’t set foot on campus anymore,” said SCS Director Vesna Hampel-Kozar. “There’s these different connections to the University and to life around campus — services on campus — that are impacting us.”

Addie Marzinske, a fourth-year student, said she was not inclined to seek further help from the University after scheduling conflicts with SCS. When Marzinske eventually met with a SCS counselor, she felt the appointment was rushed and that they were pushing for an easy fix instead of discussing the root of her problems.

“Scheduling, as well as they didn’t make me feel very welcome,” she said. “It was kind of more like it seemed like an obligation to them.”

Marzinske added that the negative experience deterred her from seeking any mental health services offered by the University.

A COVID-19 stress management survey conducted by the University last spring showed that depression among students increased during the pandemic, according to psychology professor Dr. Patricia Frazier, who worked on the survey. Forty-two percent of students surveyed had moderate to severe depression. This is a 14% increase compared to the study’s 2017 data.

Survey participants reported that their top five concerns included maintaining grades, seeing friends in person, online classes, police brutality and general uncertainty surrounding COVID-19.

Frazier said she believes that while these stressors are difficult to deal with, they are not the kind of things that would push someone to seek a counselor. However, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recommends utilizing services like counseling and therapy for pandemic-related stress.

Some of the CDC’s suggestions that students can practice outside of professional assistance are taking media breaks, taking care of their bodies and connecting with others.

“There are things that you can do on your own [to manage stress],” Frazier said. “Which are basically these kinds of self-care activities that are recommended by the CDC.”

Correction: A previous version of this article linked the incorrect survey referenced by Dr. Patricia Frazier.