EDMONTON - Being a student can be stressful - from dealing with the pressures of exams, to the challenges associated with balancing studying, a job, and social life - all while trying to plan a future career. But a major funding announcement may help many Alberta students better manage their mental health.
On Wednesday, the province's Health Minister revealed that the University of Alberta, University of Calgary and the University of Lethbridge will each be receiving $3 million over three years to expand campus mental health services.
The Alberta Students Executive Council will also receive $1.5 million over the same time period to support all post-secondary students' associations in implementing mental health programs.
While MacEwan and NAIT won't directly be receiving funding, representatives from both institutions tell Global Edmonton the U of A's funding is a good sign the province sees student mental health as a priority.
Some students and mental health professionals think it's about time.
"There are small times in the year when we didn't even have the ability to do that initial assessment and that, to me, was risk," says Dr. Donna Cave, the director of the U of A's Health and Wellness Centre.
During peak exam times, according to Dr. Cave, 40 percent of the students who should have been booked for ongoing counselling were turned away. .
"There's a lot of really depressing statistics, and our academic counterparts were telling us that they were noticing that the single biggest thing getting in the way of their students' success were mental health issues," she says.
Of 3,000 U of A students surveyed in the 2011 College Health Assessment, 57 percent said they felt tremendous stress, 51 percent felt hopeless at some point, and 7 percent had actually considered suicide.
"There's definitely the times you get super overwhelmed," admits U of A education student, Courtney Nelles. "And if you go to the counsellors and they're not available because they're already dealing with all the other students, then it can just add way more stress than you need."
Nelles decided not to wait when she couldn't get in for an appointment. "I made it through okay," she says, "but..there's a lot of students that maybe if they don't have strong support networks, that it could just be the last thing that they need."
With its extra funding, the U of A will be able to add five more psychologists, for a total of 18, plus two more psychiatric nurses and three social workers, expanding into evening hours. The money will also help grow the Unwind your Mind program, which recently brought puppy therapy to campus.
"I think that's really great because I've had to go off campus for counselling services, which is often more expensive, it's on your own time," says education student, Liz Driedger.
Matthew Armstrong, Chair, Alberta Students' Executive Council, says the announcement will provide a number of opportunities to address current gaps in service delivery across the province.
The announcement comes just as federal politicians and mental health researchers launched a new national standard on mental health in the workplace Canadian companies and employees across the country can now turn.
You can click here to read a copy of that initiative.
With files from Su-Ling Goh and Carmen Chai, Global News
© Global News. A division of Shaw Media Inc., 2013.