Chatham County Juvenile Court opens mindfulness room to help staff relieve stress

Have you ever had a workday so stressful that you just wanted to crawl under your desk and hide?

Now, when employees and first responders who work closely with the Chatham County Juvenile Court feel the stress of their jobs weighing them down, there is a dedicated room where they can go to recharge.

The "Zen Den" mindfulness room resulted from a collaboration among Chatham County Juvenile Court, St. Thomas Episcopal Church and the Coastal Georgia Indicators Coalition, and was funded by the Pittulloch Foundation and Resilient Georgia as a part of the Resilient Coastal Georgia initiative.

Alisha Markle, chief deputy court administrator, said the room is a much-needed space among first responders and court staff. “We endure a lot of secondary trauma that we kind of withhold, and it comes out in different other levels of stressors. And so, with the help of this Zen room, our hope is, is that when we’re feeling stress at the office. This will allow us the opportunity to just kind of take a little breather, feel more comfortable and re-energize to what we need to do for our youth and families and moving forward through the day.”

Richard Burkhart is the visual journalist for Savannah Morning News. You can reach him at rburkhart@savannahnow.com.

This article originally appeared on Savannah Morning News: Chatham County Juvenile Court opens mindfulness room to help staff relieve stress

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