NMSU Cooperative Extension Service faculty to present COVID-19 stress webinar

A team of specialists and agents with the New Mexico State University Cooperative Extension Service will present a seven-week webinar series, “Coping with COVID Burnout,” offering strategies for managing chronic stress related to the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic.

The sessions will cover the effects of stress on the brain and body, anxiety, depression, building resilience, positively leveraging stress, maintaining social connections, and practicing self-care through healthy nutrition, sleep and exercise.

The webinar series is free and open to the public, and will be offered at 2 p.m. Tuesdays beginning Feb. 16 through March 30. Participants may register at https://aces.nmsu.edu/covid19/burnout.

In May 2020, the same team of Extension agents and specialists provided a four-part series on stress and resilience. Information offered during those sessions may be found at https://aces.nmsu.edu/covid19/stress-management.html.

Because people continue to experience high levels of stress, the team is providing a follow-up series that expands the number of sessions from four to seven, providing additional strategies for coping with chronic stress.

“We provided the series in response to the high levels of stress people were experiencing in the communities we serve,” said Karim Martinez, Extension family life and child development specialist.

The team includes Martinez, Dianne Christensen, Suzanne DeVos-Cole, Bea Favela, Lourdes Olivas and Karen Plawecki.

Increasing amounts of stress have been an ongoing concern since the pandemic began. According to a recent study by a group of researchers including Jagdish Khubchandani, the study’s lead author and professor of public health at NMSU, all but a quarter of Americans have struggled with finances and multiple stressors during the pandemic. Stress scores were the highest for racial and ethnic minorities, females, those employed part-time, and those who were single or 35 years old and younger.

Stress caused by the pandemic has led to unhealthy behaviors such as poor diet, social isolation and emotional challenges.