Carleton is currently revising and updating its policies for taking care of student mental health issues on campus, which were last altered in 2009.
The policies were first drafted to train and equip staff and faculty to handle crisis situations of student distress. The framework has not been updated in six years and has been in the process of being revised these past few months.
Suzanne Blanchard, Carleton’s vice-president (student enrolment), is the chair of the committee in charge of reviewing the framework. She said the updating process for the framework was due.
“It was time to look at it again and really have a focus that’s a lot more holistic and broad,” Blanchard said. “We wanted to bring it back up to speed of where we’re really at on campus, which is a lot more even than what was identified in the framework itself.”
Blanchard added the committee also has student leaders participating in the revision process.
Maddie Adams, the Carleton University Students’ Association (CUSA) vice-president (student issues), is also a member of the committee.
“From that time of us developing [the first framework], there’s now been more legislation and protocol on what a framework needs to look like,” Adams said.
Adams said the new framework will be structured as a tied process that will be able to adapt to a variety of situations because “mental health has a scale of severity.”
The Student Alliance for Mental Health (SAMH), a campus group dedicated to raising awareness about mental health and advocating for an improved mental health care system on campus, independently reviewed Carleton’s current student mental health framework in November.
Charissa Feres, SAMH’s director of student issues and equity, has also been involved in reviewing the policies with the committee, and said a lot has changed on campus since the framework was first implemented.
“It’s clearly time to take a more preventative approach,” Feres said.
She said SAMH’s Student Mental Health Advocacy Council is currently in collaboration with the Carleton administration to get student feedback on student mental health policies.
“It shouldn’t be just administration who are making these decisions because they obviously don’t live the student life,” Feres said.
“I think that Carleton is really starting to listen to and engage students,” she added. “I’m really hopeful this is something that will continue into the coming months and years.”
Feres said the advocacy council wants to look into implementing peer support programs and making mental health services more readily accessible and available to students.
Adams also said the review committee is looking at adding a clause in class syllabi specifically to address situations when students’ mental health interferes with their academics.
Blanchard said Carleton hopes to have a new, updated framework finalized by the end of this academic term and implemented in September 2016.
