By KEN CARPENTER
Great Bend Post
GREAT BEND — Thanksgiving may have come and gone last week, but mental health professionals say the good things about Thanksgiving can be experienced throughout the year.
Dr. Patrick Stang from the Center for Counseling and Consultation was a guest last week on 1590 KVGB and 95.5 FM's Out & About program hosted by Scott Donovan. Stang, the medical director and staff psychiatrist for the Center, said that giving thanks has more benefits than you might expect.
“Gratitude, expressing it every day or on an every other day basis throughout the year can help your physical and mental health,” Stang commented. “It’s free and it’s easy to do. If you only do something once a year or go around the table and say what you’re grateful for, but you don’t do it any other time, or you don’t think about the things you’re grateful for any other time of the year, it’s kind of like if you only exercise once a year on national exercise day, you probably wouldn’t get much benefit from it. But if you do it on a regular basis, you get more benefit.”
According to Stang, people who just think about the things they are grateful for can also experience positive results.
“They’ve done studies on people, they had them write a gratitude letter to somebody they’re grateful for in their life,” Stang explained. “They found that even if the people didn’t send the letter, because some of them felt that, well, this is kind of corny, I don’t know if I want to do this. I’ll write it but I don’t really want to send it. They found out that people who didn’t send it, even they got benefit from at least writing the note to the person.”
Stang said the mental health studies show that expressing gratitude causes people to be more optimistic and experience less stress, depression and anxiety.
The Center for Counseling and Consultation is staffed by trained mental health professionals and serves all residents in Barton, Rice, Stafford and Pawnee counties.