Ministry moves ahead with plans to develop 24/7 mental-health support for students

News January 23, 2019

The Ministry of Mental Health and Addictions has plans to develop new 24/7 mental-health and substance-use counselling services that will include access to online chat, text, phone, and email support.

13 percent of Canadian post-secondary students who took part in a 2016 National College Health Assessment (NCHA) survey reported contemplating suicide in the 12 months before the survey; 2.1 percent said they had attempted suicide in the same time period; 44.4 percent reported feeling so depressed in the previous 12 months that it was difficult to function.

Students are stretched in too many directions, says Camosun College Student Society wellness and access director Eleanor Vannan.

“It’s a bit like a Jenga tower,” she says. “You take away enough pieces and people start to crumble.”

Camosun College Student Society wellness and access director Eleanor Vannan (file photo).

Vannan says that students in her parents’ generation could support themselves through summer jobs; they wouldn’t have to work the rest of the year. Things are different now, she says.

“There is a lot more stress,” says Vannan, “especially when there aren’t services there for those students. The longer a student defers to ask for help or to get treatment the worse their condition becomes.”

Camosun director of student affairs Evan Hilchey says that this is a great new direction for the Ministry. (Minister of mental health and addictions Judy Darcy was not available for an interview by deadline, but a spokesperson for the Ministry told Nexus that the Ministry is in the request for proposals process for the project.)

“It’s an exciting time for post-secondary institutions as we look to provide increased, enhanced support for students on our post-secondary campuses,” says Hilchey. 

Hilchey says that the number of students in the NCHA survey who said they faced mental-health struggles speaks to the complex nature of the lives of the students who are attending post-secondary institutions.

“The variety of pressures that students face, such things as part-time employment, the financial impact of attending post-secondary institutions, and the complex pressures of engaging in academia [contribute to student mental-health issues],” says Hilchey.

Vannan says that this announcement is a great step, especially if a student is having such severe anxiety that they feel they can’t sit in a room with others or walk through a busy post-secondary campus. 

“It’s rather cliched, but it’s a more common experience than you may feel. It can feel very isolating,” she says. “Your experience, when you’re going through that, feels so unique, like no one has ever felt the way you feel in that moment, and it’s that negative thought pattern you’re feeding yourself.”

Part of the answer for Vannan lies in being open and transparent.

“Chances are, if you share that with someone, they’ve gone through a moment like that, too… When they’re not in that crisis, saying, ‘This is what I’m going through,’ they may be that person that can say, ‘Oh, actually, here’s a phone number… here are the services.’”

Vannan is no stranger to being there: she knows what it’s like to be stuck in silence. The key, she says, is keeping connected when you’re not in crisis so that, hopefully, it’s not so hard to pick up the phone on a bad day. 

“It’s hard,” she admits. “For me, it’s having that one friend that I know I can simply say to, ‘I’m having a hard time; I’m feeling so out of it that it’s hard to find the motivation to plug my phone in and charge it.’ It’s the times that you’re not in crisis that you need to be reaching out to those people and building those connections, and being very open.”