If you browsed through social media on Jan. 30, chances are you saw #BellLetsTalk circulating around. Political leaders, celebrities, corporations and even McMaster University shared the hashtag in support of “ending the stigma” around mental illness.
Success and meaning can be found along many paths, but the paths can be rough and winding. | @McMasterSWC #BrighterWorld #BellLetsTalk https://t.co/fzBIjSte6G
— McMaster University (@McMasterU) January 30, 2019
But like #BellLetsTalk, McMaster’s mental health initiatives seem more performative than anything else. While offering “self-care” tips and hour-long therapy dog sessions can help students de-stress and perhaps initiate conversations about mental health, it alone is not sufficient.
This sentiment is shared amongst many other students and has been brought up time after time. It is truly disheartening then that the university seems to do little to meaningfully address students’ concerns.
https://twitter.com/calvinprocyon/status/1090777829510397952
Instead of investing in more counsellors at the Student Wellness Centre or restructuring their support systems on campus, starting Feb.4, McMaster is running Thrive Week. Thrive Week is a week-long initiative aimed to “explore [students’] path to mental health”. The week boasts events including yoga, Zumba and meditation circles.
There is no doubt that engaging in wellness and mindfulness activities, including activities like yoga and Zumba, can help alleviate some of the stresses of university and can positively benefit your mental health.
However, it is in itself not enough to actually help students overcome mental health issues. McMaster acknowledges that most students seem to experience, at least during some point in their undergraduate career, mental health issues. This is telling of a systemic issue. Mental health issues are largely attributable to socioeconomic factors. Financial strain, food insecurity and lack of a responsive administration can all factor into developing mental health issues as a student.
The best way to help students is to address the root of the problem, which often lies within the very structures of the university. Until McMaster addresses these systemic issues, yoga classes and wellness panels will do little to remedy students’ concerns.
Beyond addressing systemic issues, students struggling with mental health issues can’t colour their issues away; they require professional help. It is true that the university offers trained peer-support volunteers at services like the Student Health Education Centre and the Women Gender and Equity Network, but again, this is not enough. The responsibility of students’ mental health should not fall on the shoulders of other students.
If the university truly cared about their students’ mental health, they would invest in more counsellors and actively work towards ensuring that waiting times at SWC aren’t months on end. They would make systems for receiving academic accommodations more accessible, as they currently require students to provide documentation of diagnosed mental health issues.
Talk is cheap. So are free Zumba classes. While raising awareness and reducing the stigma around mental is important, what students need is real change to ensure there are actual support systems on campus. The university has a responsibility to make that change happen.
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By: Kamila Matyslakiewics
McMaster University boasts commitment to mental health and well-being and claims to prioritize these services for students.
But what is really happening on the front lines? What is the actual student experience of trying to access counselling services at McMaster?
Mental health services for students are inadequate at McMaster University.
When trying to get access to services on campus, students can expect to experience wait times of a couple of weeks or more between appointments. This is unacceptable and needs to be addressed.
For the students who have the courage to come forward and seek counselling, they are prone to the possibility of being told that resources are stretched thin and that their needs can be left unaccommodated.
There are several reasons as to why this could be the case.
A simple solution to the lack of resources and the ridiculous wait times that students experience could be as simple as hiring more counsellors to meet the need of students or introducing new specialized services to give students more direction in choosing where to invest their wait time.
Generally, when seeking an appointment, students can expect to receive a consultation appointment the same day and they are assigned a counsellor.
This is the way things should run, but this is often not the case.
When trying to get access to services on campus, students can expect to experience wait times of a couple of weeks or more between appointments.
The real issue comes when student requests to book regular, weekly appointments with a counsellor. The wait times between appointments are usually a few weeks.
In the life of a struggling student, there are so many things that can happen in the span of a few weeks and the consequences of this wait time could be a detrimental to one’s health.
In order to address their concerns, the students that are coming forward and seeking help need consistent, weekly sessions to have the chance to be heard so that they can begin understanding their concerns and developing strategies and solutions for to address their concerns.
In my personal experience, I sought counselling through the McMaster University Wellness Centrr. After my first appointment, I had a wait time of three weeks for the next appointment.
The day before the second appointment, I phoned the Wellness Centre to confirm the time of the appointment. Later that same day, I received a voicemail stating that the appointment had been cancelled because the counselor was going to be away.
To think that if it had been me that cancelled the appointment in short notice, I would have been hit with a $50 fine is an upsetting reality in addition to the lack of follow up about scheduling another appointment. Given that my total time between appointments added up to five weeks, this experience was more than frustrating.
I’m not the only student who has felt like they were slipping through the cracks of the system after having the courage to reach out and seek help. This is unacceptable at such a large, renowned educational institution like McMaster University that students and parents depend on for well-being.
Each year during the MSU presidential elections, most campaigns have some mental health platform promising to improve services and hire more counselors.
And yet, action generally ends at hash tags, buzzwords and expressing sentiments about the importance of mental health awareness.
These are important first steps and are necessary to help end the stigma surrounding mental health, but they’re not enough to directly meet the needs of students.
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By: Alex Bak
Mental health is a topic that has gained a lot of attention at McMaster. The recent push in initiatives and the sheer number of advocacy campaigns have made it the most relevant topic at the university.
The dialogue started by students and staff about the stigma of mental health issues swelled and increased awareness around the topic. However, an issue arises cloaked by all the buzz, as there is still a lack of mental health support services on campus that adequately support students who are suffering from mental illness.
While some student-run services, such as the Student Health Education Centre and the Women Gender and Equity Network have peer-support volunteers, McMaster should consider hiring more trained counsellors equipped to deal with these illnesses. These are the installments students need to combat these issues, but it is presently lacking on campus.
For students who trust these student-run services, it may be worth considering hiring trained employees with the appropriate qualifications on campus that these volunteer-run services can refer to when student’s mental health is detrimental or comprised.
For many students, having to wait months for an available appointment doesn’t fit the temporal needs of counselling as mental health issues can become increasingly worse in a short period.
In addition, for many students, having to wait months for an available appointment doesn’t fit the temporal needs of counselling as mental health issues can become increasingly worse in a short period.
The Student Wellness Centre is a location for mental health issues on campus and having an inadequate supply of staff for the volume of demand is a problem that is clouded behind the animated awareness campaigns, discussions and forums. Especially when students who have accessibility issues are asked to provide evidence of their mental illnesses to find academic support in services such as Student Accessibility Services, mental health is compromised for students who are seeking help but are having trouble finding it on campus.
A factor that plays into the concern for mental health awareness and services with adequate support is the lack of advertisement of the existing support services. For students who may not be as involved in school related events or co-curricular activities, it may be hard to even be aware that certain services are present on campus. Especially for students with symptoms of isolation due to state of mental health, it makes it difficult to cater to a large student body if students if there is little knowledge due to lack of awareness for mental health support.
Mental health is still a subject that is sensitive and an issue that is often misunderstood even though it has made great strides compared to the past. The tireless efforts made by local student groups and organizations to increase dialogue needs to be complemented by the implementation of the hiring of more mental health support staff or counsellors and advisors appropriately prepared to handle these issues. This could then work to destigmatize the issues around mental health and ensure that students are receiving the support that they need on campus.
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