The Graduate Students’ Association (GSA) is collaborating with the university’s administration to launch a new mental health service specifically for graduate students.
Bonnie Stephanson, assistant director of the university’s Health and Counselling Services (HCS), said that discussions between the GSA, the HCS, and Carleton’s vice-president (students & enrolment) have resulted in two collaborative pilot projects for this academic year.
“The first is to help the GSA develop a graduate student peer support program while the second is to offer the services of a mental health counsellor who, for two days a week, will focus on support and programming for graduate students,” she said in an email. “This includes a combination of drop-in sessions and booked appointments.”
Stephanson also said that the HCS has hired a counsellor to provide counselling specifically to graduate students for two days a week.
“Graduate students can also meet with any of our counsellors in Health and Counselling Services,” she said. “This new counsellor is full-time [for two days], and for the remaining three days a week she will provide counselling (both same-day and appointment-based) to the general student population, as do all of our counsellors.”
Miranda Leibel, the GSA’s vice-president (operations), said it’s important to have counselling services focused towards graduate students.
“One of the big concerns that we’ve been advocating for over the years is that a number of graduate students have come forward to us, and let us know that graduate student needs are different from undergraduate student needs, and that they would like to have a counsellor available who understands the particular mental health needs of graduate students,” she said.
“It’s also just important to know that graduate students do have quite high rates of anxiety and depression,” she added.
Leibel said graduate students have about six times the prevalence of anxiety nad depression as the general population, according to a 2018 study by Science Magazine.
“So, I think there’s definitely a need for graduate students specifically,” she said.
Leibel said the GSA’s counselling services will be primarily in-person.
“One of the mental health issues we heard that graduate students in particular deal with is a lot of isolation,” she said. “A lot of graduate students aren’t in classes anymore—they’re in labs doing research or they’re in their offices—so part of having that in person and having face-to-face communication really stems from the need to break that social isolation and create a sense of community.”
“That’s also why we’ve implemented both the one-on-one counselling, but also the group focused workshops that can really bring people together and remind graduate students that there is a community on campus that cares about them,” she added.
Photo by Graham Swaney
