Fanshawe provides help for mental health
Our relationship with the
school year is a love-hate
one.
We're all here for a specific reason (or at least, we should be): to get an education and hopefully earn a career. But there are two sides to the coin.
College gives us a chance to have fun and grow as individuals. We experience new things, establish relationships and create memories that can last a lifetime.
At the same time, your time in college can be some of your most trying years. You will be overwhelmed with work, stretched out financially, and gripped with responsibility. Sometimes these stressors, in combination with many others, can get the better of us and affect us for the worst.
According to the Canadian Mental Health Association, an estimated 10 to 20 per cent of youth are affected by a mental illness or disorder. Suicide is one of the leading causes of death for Canadians 15 to 24 years of age, and only one in five youth who need mental health services get them.
The detriments of mental illness may be real, but that doesn't mean it has to be real for you. Thankfully, there is an answer right within Fanshawe College.
The Counselling and Accessibility Services office is located in F2010, and this is where you need to go for help, whether you have a mental illness or not.
Shirley Porter has been a counsellor at the office for 14 years, and she explained what to expect when you seek help for the first time. “The first thing that would happen is that our front office staff will assess whether it was so urgent that the student would need to be seen the same day, or whether it was something that could wait until there was a full open appointment — a 50-minute appointment — and the student would be scheduled to see one of our personal counsellors.”
When seeing one of the counsellors, the first session will be conducted based on what they feel would be appropriate for your mental state. “If the student were to tell me that they had been experiencing what I would consider to be symptoms of depression or that might indicate anxiety or some other type of mental health illness, I might do an informal assessment,” Porter said. “So that might be an interview, there may some surveys I'd be doing — the Beck Depression Inventory or Anxiety Inventory — and that's particularly with students who haven't had a diagnosed mental illness previously. If they have had a diagnosed mental illness previously, then what I would do is advise them of services available through Accessibility Accommodations. There are academic accommodations they could receive, as students with documented disabilities. They would have to have some forms filled out by their health practitioner.”
Mental illness affects many of us, although that doesn't mean someone without it is immune from the pressures of life. There's one thing that's synonymous for all of us, whether you suffer from mental illness or not, and that's stress.
The school year is full of stress, and oftentimes it's unavoidable. Schoolwork, money and our social lives are stressors that affect us students, so we just have to accept them and know how to deal with them the right way.
Porter said that although managing stress may be hard, the Counselling and Accessibility Services office can help give you the tools to do it. “Students just trying to manage the stress of being a student, being away from home maybe for the first time, financial stresses; we work with them on developing a coping plan,” she explained. “What I will do with students is an actual plan we work through on their stress tolerance skills, identifying things that have worked for them in the past or that they're willing to try, skills that help them get grounded in the present moment, and self-soothing types of skills to try to reduce some of the daily stressors, because when a person is full up to the top with stress, they can't take anymore.”
Stress can be overwhelming, but it is manageable. Porter said her office aims to empower people with the confidence to deal with stress by finding out what could work for each student. “Spilling your coffee might be enough to cause either an angry outburst or tears. We have to make some room,” she admitted. “If we can get rid of some of the external stressors, we look at how to do that. If we can add supports, we do that, and if we can add coping strategies, that the individual has some control over and is within their sphere of control, then we give them the opportunity to do that too. Because when a person's under stress, it can be very hard to remember what works for you to reduce stress, and what's worked in the past, because you can be just so overwhelmed.”
Sometimes alleviating stress can come in different ways than you may think. Porter added that the school offers other methods to help students with the study grind. “During the year, there's weekly meditation sessions twice a week offered by the counsellors here in this office,” she said. “There's an adult peer-support group for students who are coming back later and they have some different concerns or challenges than students coming straight from high school. In conjunction with the Student Union, we offer de-frazzle days where students come the few days before exam week … in the past, massage therapists and Reiki therapists have been brought in — different sessions to help people decompress and let go of some stress before going into exams.”
Your mental health is a lot like renovating a house. It may not be what you want it to be when you first move in, but over time, with the right help from the right people, it can be turned into something fascinating.
Here is video of Stuart Gooden's visit to the Counselling and Accessibility Services office to find out about some of the support that they offer to students with mental health issues.
We're all here for a specific reason (or at least, we should be): to get an education and hopefully earn a career. But there are two sides to the coin.
College gives us a chance to have fun and grow as individuals. We experience new things, establish relationships and create memories that can last a lifetime.
At the same time, your time in college can be some of your most trying years. You will be overwhelmed with work, stretched out financially, and gripped with responsibility. Sometimes these stressors, in combination with many others, can get the better of us and affect us for the worst.
According to the Canadian Mental Health Association, an estimated 10 to 20 per cent of youth are affected by a mental illness or disorder. Suicide is one of the leading causes of death for Canadians 15 to 24 years of age, and only one in five youth who need mental health services get them.
The detriments of mental illness may be real, but that doesn't mean it has to be real for you. Thankfully, there is an answer right within Fanshawe College.
The Counselling and Accessibility Services office is located in F2010, and this is where you need to go for help, whether you have a mental illness or not.
Shirley Porter has been a counsellor at the office for 14 years, and she explained what to expect when you seek help for the first time. “The first thing that would happen is that our front office staff will assess whether it was so urgent that the student would need to be seen the same day, or whether it was something that could wait until there was a full open appointment — a 50-minute appointment — and the student would be scheduled to see one of our personal counsellors.”
When seeing one of the counsellors, the first session will be conducted based on what they feel would be appropriate for your mental state. “If the student were to tell me that they had been experiencing what I would consider to be symptoms of depression or that might indicate anxiety or some other type of mental health illness, I might do an informal assessment,” Porter said. “So that might be an interview, there may some surveys I'd be doing — the Beck Depression Inventory or Anxiety Inventory — and that's particularly with students who haven't had a diagnosed mental illness previously. If they have had a diagnosed mental illness previously, then what I would do is advise them of services available through Accessibility Accommodations. There are academic accommodations they could receive, as students with documented disabilities. They would have to have some forms filled out by their health practitioner.”
Mental illness affects many of us, although that doesn't mean someone without it is immune from the pressures of life. There's one thing that's synonymous for all of us, whether you suffer from mental illness or not, and that's stress.
The school year is full of stress, and oftentimes it's unavoidable. Schoolwork, money and our social lives are stressors that affect us students, so we just have to accept them and know how to deal with them the right way.
Porter said that although managing stress may be hard, the Counselling and Accessibility Services office can help give you the tools to do it. “Students just trying to manage the stress of being a student, being away from home maybe for the first time, financial stresses; we work with them on developing a coping plan,” she explained. “What I will do with students is an actual plan we work through on their stress tolerance skills, identifying things that have worked for them in the past or that they're willing to try, skills that help them get grounded in the present moment, and self-soothing types of skills to try to reduce some of the daily stressors, because when a person is full up to the top with stress, they can't take anymore.”
Stress can be overwhelming, but it is manageable. Porter said her office aims to empower people with the confidence to deal with stress by finding out what could work for each student. “Spilling your coffee might be enough to cause either an angry outburst or tears. We have to make some room,” she admitted. “If we can get rid of some of the external stressors, we look at how to do that. If we can add supports, we do that, and if we can add coping strategies, that the individual has some control over and is within their sphere of control, then we give them the opportunity to do that too. Because when a person's under stress, it can be very hard to remember what works for you to reduce stress, and what's worked in the past, because you can be just so overwhelmed.”
Sometimes alleviating stress can come in different ways than you may think. Porter added that the school offers other methods to help students with the study grind. “During the year, there's weekly meditation sessions twice a week offered by the counsellors here in this office,” she said. “There's an adult peer-support group for students who are coming back later and they have some different concerns or challenges than students coming straight from high school. In conjunction with the Student Union, we offer de-frazzle days where students come the few days before exam week … in the past, massage therapists and Reiki therapists have been brought in — different sessions to help people decompress and let go of some stress before going into exams.”
Your mental health is a lot like renovating a house. It may not be what you want it to be when you first move in, but over time, with the right help from the right people, it can be turned into something fascinating.
Here is video of Stuart Gooden's visit to the Counselling and Accessibility Services office to find out about some of the support that they offer to students with mental health issues.
