This fall, the Mental Health Commission of Canada (MHCC) along with seven Canadian universities and colleges, will implement a program set out to teach students to better understand and manage their mental health, according to a press release by the MHCC.
The MHCC is a non-profit, national organization created by the Canadian government in 2007 to develop programs and resources to help Canadians with their mental health, according to their website.
The pilot project that made its way to seven campuses is “The Inquiring Mind” and was first developed by Andrew Szeto, a psychology professor at University of Calgary, according to the release.
The project entails a free, three-hour training for undergraduate students to better understand the concepts of mental health, to recognize signs of it in themselves or others, to reduce stigma around mental health, to support friends with mental health problem and to maintain one’s own mental wellbeing, according to University of Calgary’s website.
However, the project has now expanded to the campuses of the University of Lethbridge, McEwan University, Memorial University, Dalhousie University, and the Nova Scotia Community College.
Szeto said in an email “The Inquiring Mind” first started in 2015 when he received a small grant with his collaborator, Keith Dobson, a psychology professor from the University of Calgary Student Enrolment Services, to adapt The Working Mind—which focused on staff and faculty—to a program suitable for students.
The project contains three main components: stigma reduction, building resiliency, and the Mental Health Continuum model.
“We also shot videos with students with lived experience of mental illnesses [describing] their mental health journey including help-seeking and recovery,” he added.
The Mental Health Continuum model also focuses on disregarding formal labels, according to Szeto. Instead, it categorizes mental health on a clear colour scale: green (healthy), yellow (reacting), orange (injured) and red (ill), and it “stresses that a person can move from green to red, and back again,” according to the press release.
Over the summer, a variety of staff, peer supporters, and student leaders received training on how to adequately convey “The Inquiring Mind” specifically to the undergraduate experience.
“They will go back to campus and hold as many workshops as they can, to build a foundation for a supportive, mentally healthy campus environment,” Szeto said in the press release.
Clare Linnea Hickie, a sixth-year psychology student at the University of Calgary, shared her experience with depression and anxiety in a MHCC article and a training video. Hickie was also a student member of the committee for the developmental process of The Inquiring Mind, according to the article.
“Knowing that there are others out there with shared experiences, and people on campus who care and want to make things better, work to create change on my campus and in the community”, Hickie said in the MHCC article.
When Szeto was asked about expanding the project to Carleton, he said that the project reaching other schools was dependent upon the evaluation results of the initial pilot within each campus.
There may be tentative plans to expand the program to a high school population, he added.
Since the training is in a pilot phase, registrants in the training will be asked to complete an optional and confidential before-and-after survey to provide feedback on the program, according to University of Calgary’s website.
Emily Birkett, a fourth-year Carleton criminology student and residence fellow, said there is enough support for students living in residence but not enough in the wider campus community.
“I would like to see resources on campus that are similar to resources offered in residence, such as a wellness space and mental health champions,” she said. “I think that drop-in hours are a great feature of our residence counselling office so that students have access to help very quickly when they need it.”
Photo by Aaron Hemens
