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BU puts mental health top of mind

Brandon Sun, The (Manitoba, Canada) - 12/4/2014

Brandon University is launching a campus-wide mental health initiative today aimed at ramping up student services as visits to campus counsellors continue to increase each year.

"There's been a steady trend of growth in our counselling numbers every year," said Tom Brophy, the university's registrar and associate vice-president in charge of student services and enrolment management.

"It's becoming more and more of an issue on campus ... so we see this as a proactive response to increase our internal capacity."

To help launch the Student Wellness Project, BU partnered with and received $10,000 from Bell Let's Talk Canada and a $5,000 grant from Healthy Brandon.

These funds helped send two BU faculty members to Vancouver for mental health first-aid training through the Mental Health Commission of Canada.

Chris Brown said the training they received will help them spot mental health issues in students and provide the appropriate supports.

"Mental health first aid is provided to a person developing a mental health problem or in a mental health crisis," Brown said. "Part of it is removing some of the stereotypes around mental illness and also learning how to train people to be able to identify some of the warning signs."

The two faculty members will now help train other staff members as well as interested community members, Brophy said. Training sessions should begin sometime next month.

A BU student is also helping research and develop a peer help program to increase student awareness, which will be more geared toward educating other students about mental health issues.

"Students educating other students about mental health issues has proven to be very powerful," Brophy said. "Students tend to look to their peers for advice and guidance on these types of matters."

BU currently employs two full-time student counsellors. The counsellors are there to help students with academic stress and anxiety, among other issues, and they follow a standard counselling model.

Brophy said there is often a two-week waiting period from when a student books an appointment to when they meet with a counsellor.

However, students experiencing high levels of stress get bumped to the top of the list for same day or next day emergency sessions.

The student-to-counsellor ratio at BU is currently one counsellor for every 1,300 to 1,500 students.

"Obviously it would be great to have more, but we're certainly at the standard for what the student-to-counsellor ratio is nationally," Brophy said.

Meanwhile, Assiniboine Community College employs two aboriginal student services staff members along with three student success advisers who serve as both student counsellors and academic advisers.

"Whatever the student is having difficulty with, the student success adviser can be their first go-to and sometimes academic stuff comes up and sometimes personal stuff comes up and they're working with the same person," said Anne Bridge, director of student services at ACC. "The issues cross over so much anyway."

With student mental health issues becoming more of an issue at the post-secondary level across the country, Brophy said it's important institutions continue to keep up with the demand.

"It's an important issue for us and it's certainly an essential part of the healthy development of our students ... so we're watching it and monitoring the growth as demand increases."

» lenns@brandonsun.com

» Twitter: @LindseyEnns