Health Edition Mental
November 4, 2021
PAGE 4
The Power of a Smile
Panayiotis Kapanides improved his mental health by focusing on being himself and living a simple lifestyle. _ By Garrett Cote _ @garrett_cote
Only so much about life are the events that directly impact a person. The majority of it, however, is how that individual reacts to these events; how they respond. Do they choose to let them define who they are, or do they strive to improve in small-scale phases every waning minute of each day? For Springfield College junior Panayiotis ‘Pete’ Kapanides, the answer to that question is simple. “He was the first person I can sit here and say that I learned how to grow around him,” said Kapanides’ best friend, Cam Borges. “We would challenge each other every single day to get out of our comfort zone. To get better. It was special because we were so comfortable talking about our emotions, and we would sit down and do it all the time. It really helped him grow.” During Kapanides’ freshman year on Alden Street, he was blind sided and betrayed by one of the most important people in his life. While visiting his significant other on Valentine’s Day in February of 2020 at Westfield State, he learned she had been unfaithful to him. About a month later,
Springfield announced that there were no plans to return to campus for the remainder of the 2020 spring semester because of the COVID-19 pandemic. “I was in a deep hole,” Kapanides said. “I was super depressed through all of quarantine, and just waking up every day and having to Zoom all of my classes was awful. The only thing that would get me through the day was working out in my backyard, shooting hoops or going for a run. All of my trust that I once had, was just broken like that.” This sent him on a downward spiral, plummeting towards rock bottom. On top of this, Kapanides was hesitant to leave his Bedford, Mass. home, because his grandparents were living there with no option to fly back to their home country of Greece since the pandemic had become such a real threat. Being trapped in his room seemingly forced him to work on his mental health. It forced him to rebuild himself after offering so much of his time and effort into one relationship. “I had my grandparents living with me, so I
(Photo Courtesy of Panayiotis Kapanides)
couldn’t do much,” Kapanides said. “I wouldn’t even eat dinner near them because I didn’t want to risk anything with COVID. I was going from my bedroom, to the bathroom to outside, just working on myself. I didn’t see anyone for two months until my grandparents were able to fly back to Greece. “Going through that sucked. It was the low point of my life, but I would say quarantine is probably the best thing that has ever happened to me because I was just locked in. I used all that time to myself, and there was no better time for me to focus on me.”
After pondering the thought of not returning to Springfield for his sophomore year, Kapanides chose to give it another shot, and he made the decision to room with Borges in International Hall. Similar to the scenario at his house, there weren’t too many places for Kapanides to go because of the coronavirus guidelines the school installed, so the only option was to sit in his room. His relationship with Borges would soon blossom. “We knew when we just needed to sit down and talk about life,” Kapanides said. “Whether we were playing Madden super close to the screen, or
sitting on our beds looking out the window, we clicked on a different level. I got so into mental health during those moments because I realized that everybody goes through something different.” The strides Kapanides took from his freshman to sophomore year were as big of strides as his 6’3 frame can take - which are huge. One of the first people to notice a difference was his teammate on the Pride men’s basketball team, Daryl Costa. “When he came in as a freshman, he wasn’t that vocal, he was more on the shy side,” Costa said. “But he grew into an incredible leader, and he was con-
