GUELPH POLITICAST #81 - Kristina Virro, Nutritionist and Psychotherapist-in-Training

You may recall the this past school year was marked with a particular sadness on the University of Guelph campus. Several students took their own lives over the course of the fall and winter semesters, leaving a campus community in mourning and searching for answers. How could so many, feel so lost and alone, and see no other alternative for themselves but to take their own lives?

While the local media has done a good job of saying, "Hey, there seems to be a problem here!" as usual, nothing's been done to get to the root cause or to figure out what can be done to help students when they return to university in the fall. How can the university administration, professors, classmates, and others help those that think they can't be helped before it's too late? These are questions I've been preoccupied with in addressing what happen at the U of G last year.

And that's how I happened to come across Kristina Virro. She's a nutritionist who's now pursuing her degree in psychotherapy at the University of Guelph, and with a background in journalism as well. Virro is using her Fresh Insight blog to talk about the intersection between mental health, physical health and what we consume, and the negative effect it might be having on our general well-being. There have been studies into the correlation between what we eat and how we feel, and let's just say that one look at the meal variety at the University Centre is not the key to happiness.

So with her practical and academic expertise in hand, I invited Virro to take part in this week's podcast. With an eye to the fact that we don't know, and may never know, what went on the heads of those students that took their lives, we talk about the reasons why young people sometimes take their own lives, what the warning signs are, why we sometimes miss those warning signs, and how we all might be able to get better health in general by making a couple of simple lifestyle changes today.

So let's get healthy on this week's Guelph Politicast.

You can get more tips and advice from Kristina Virro at her website here.

The theme music for the Guelph Politicast is from the KPM Klassics collection by Syd Dale.

The host for the Guelph Politicast is Podbean. Find more episodes of the Politicast here.

Remember that the Politicast Podbean channel is also the host for podcast versions of Open Sources Guelph. The previous Thursday's episode of Open Sources will be posted on Mondays.