CREDIT: KERRA SEAY
The Ontario University and College Health Association is working to propose an Ontario wide strategy to accommodate the growing number of students seeking mental health support.

The growing number of post-secondary students seeking assistance for their mental health outweighs the number of counsellors able to meet the required attention in a respectable timeframe, according to a survey conducted by the Ontario University and College Health Association (OUCHA).

This is the second time OUCHA conducted this sort of survey, the first being in 2013.

Meg Houghton, president of OUCHA said the survey was done through a baseline of data on post-secondary student health, and the results indicated an increase in the number of students facing mental health challenges.

“What we found over that three year period was that anxiety, depression, consideration of suicide and attempted suicide had gone up among post-secondary students in Ontario. We are seeing high rates of anxiety and depression, all of the data is very concerning,” Houghton said.

The results showed 65 per cent of students indicated experiencing overwhelming anxiety, 46 per cent felt so depressed that they found it hard to function, 13 per cent seriously considered suicide and 11 per cent had at one point attempted suicide (with 2.2 per cent doing so in the last year).

The studies show people between the ages of 18 to 24 are at the highest risk of being affected by a mental health problem.

Houghton said there are speculative reasons why this age group is more prevalent to mental health conditions, ranging from the enormous transition from being a young person, to going into adulthood, to taking on stressors and adapting coping mechanisms to those stressors through brain development and neurology.

“No matter what the reasons are, we know that early intervention is key to producing significant improvements on an individual level and reducing symptomology, so the earlier folks get access to talk therapy and to meds, the more likely they are to resume a reasonable baseline of functioning,” Houghton said.

With these results, the OUCHA is working on a proposal that will be featured on their website hopefully the middle of next month and calls for a possible Ontario wide strategy for post-secondary campuses to have more help in being able to provide students with the assistance they need to work through their mental health cases.

“What we are attempting to do is get government attention on the need to focus mental health efforts around emerging adults, and ultimately to create specific clinical hubs on all of our campuses,” Houghton said.

The proposal would be asking the government to help fund a strategy that would help aid schools accommodate the growing number of students facing mental health challenges.

Houghton said post-secondary institutes are lacking the appropriate funding for physicians, nurses and counsellors and there needs to be a more mobilized effort and funding for the younger generation and they get early intervention and solid treatment.

“We’re hoping we can look at this [situation] from a holistic perspective,” Houghton said. “What access does this population need in order to maintain their well-being.”

Houghton said this all comes down to funding, which she hopes the government will be of aid.

“We know that a portion of our heath dollar spending is to our ever- increasing elderly population, and that’s important, and obviously health dollars need to get stretched to meet all segments of our population’s needs. I think that the lost opportunity here is that without investing in emerging adult mental health, we should expect more students to drop out of school and we should expect health spending to increase down the line.”

Houghton said this funding is critical because it will affect the future, while early prevention and intervention can cut costs down the road.

She said the importance of the OUCHA’s proposal is to let the government know that they need to make tough decisions about limited funding.

If the proposal is approved, the OUCHA would be involved in the implementation of any additional clinical support directive for postsecondary students, and hopefully involved in the development of a strategy, according to Houghton.

Heather Cummings, executive director of Student Success and Suzanne Book, senior manager of Counselling and Accessibility Services, had similar ideas about the results and possible provincial strategy.

Both agree that they have seen an increase in both the numbers of students seeking mental health support as well as the severity of mental health issues presented by the students, and would welcome additional funding to assist mental health supports for students.

Both said there are also a number of reasons why mental health cases are rising, with factors including peer pressure, financial stress, lack of awareness of coping strategies, significant online time and poor eating and sleeping habits to name a few.

Both have some thoughts about possible government support.

“Support for mental health requires our health and education ministries to work together to identify funding and strategies. We need to address mental health at all levels of education if we are to help students identify what it means to be healthy, to support early identification of mental health concerns and provide supports when they are needed,” Cummings said.