![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/08\/IMG_3342.jpg\")
<\/a>Vannan says that students in her parents\u2019 generation could support themselves through summer jobs; they wouldn\u2019t have to work the rest of the year. Things are different now, she says.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cThere is a lot more stress,\u201d says Vannan, \u201cespecially when there aren\u2019t services there for those students. The longer a student defers to ask for help or to get treatment the worse their condition becomes.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
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<\/em> that the Ministry is in the request for proposals process for the project.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cIt\u2019s an exciting time for post-secondary institutions as we look to provide increased, enhanced support for students on our post-secondary campuses,\u201d says Hilchey. <\/p>\n\n\n\n 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.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cThe 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],\u201d says Hilchey.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Vannan says that this announcement is a great step, especially if a student is having such severe anxiety that they feel they can\u2019t sit in a room with others or walk through a busy post-secondary campus. <\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cIt\u2019s rather cliched, but it\u2019s a more common experience than you may feel. It can feel very isolating,\u201d she says. \u201cYour experience, when you\u2019re going through that, feels so unique, like no one has ever felt the way you feel in that moment, and it\u2019s that negative thought pattern you\u2019re feeding yourself.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Part of the answer for Vannan lies in being open and transparent.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cChances are, if you share that with someone, they\u2019ve gone through a moment like that, too… When they\u2019re not in that crisis, saying, \u2018This is what I\u2019m going through,\u2019 they may be that person that can say, \u2018Oh, actually, here\u2019s a phone number… here are the services.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Vannan is no stranger to being there: she knows what it\u2019s like to be stuck in silence. The key, she says, is keeping connected when you\u2019re not in crisis so that, hopefully, it\u2019s not so hard to pick up the phone on a bad day. <\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cIt\u2019s hard,\u201d she admits. \u201cFor me, it\u2019s having that one friend that I know I can simply say to, \u2018I\u2019m having a hard time; I\u2019m feeling so out of it that it\u2019s hard to find the motivation to plug my phone in and charge it.\u2019 It\u2019s the times that you\u2019re not in crisis that you need to be reaching out to those people and building those connections, and being very open.\u201d <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" 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 […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":16190,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[13,225],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-17028","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news","category-january-23-2019"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17028","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=17028"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17028\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":17031,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17028\/revisions\/17031"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/16190"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=17028"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=17028"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=17028"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}