Mental Health Awareness: Still Getting There

Issues around mental health awareness have gained more of an importance in the last couple of years – especially in college campuses, where students are bound to come across many stressors during their transition to adulthood. A 2011 survey of 1600 University of Alberta students portrays the gravity of the situation; about 51 per cent reported that, within the past 12 months, they’d “felt things were hopeless,” and a shocking 7 per cent admitted they’d “seriously considered suicide.” It is clear these problems aren’t unique to University of Alberta; Robin Everall, provost fellow for student mental health, says “It’s across all of North America.”

It is safe to say that mental health awareness has become something that holds personal significance to most of us. With the increasing prevalence, we all know someone who is either personally suffering from this, or heard about someone’s struggle through second hand stories. Either way, what is even more shocking is how these people can seem to be just fine when you don’t know what they are going through. Mental health problems have become a kind of taboo – everyone knows they exist but as soon as someone starts showing some of the ‘symptoms,’ the sympathy we mostly hear from people when they are ‘theoretically speaking’ about mental health problems disappears, and it usually just takes a simple sentence to shatter everything these people have worked so hard to build around raising awareness for their conditions.

This was exactly what happened at University of Toronto last month. When Joshua Grondin, a student in lecturer Sean Uppal’s Maths 223 course, presented a doctor’s note to Uppal saying that he had suffered from two anxiety attacks the night before his March 18 exam, Uppal answered him with a mere “You don’t look sick,” and proceeded to tell Grondin that “since it wasn’t a physical illness, [he] could physically be present in the room.” (City) Uppal told Grondin that he could either take a zero in the exam, or write it. Grondin chose to write it, scored 23 per cent, and ended up withdrawing from the course.

Grondin, unsurprisingly, is very upset. Trying to make his professor understand his condition wasn’t the only time he ran into problems; he says he has “tried to make doctor’s appointments on campus” and “had some doctors cancel on [him],” not to mention the two-month waitlist with other doctors. Sarah Jenkins, a 19-year-old Ryerson student, explains the situation: “unless you’re suicidal … you’re not top of the waitlist. You’re not going to see anybody for months at a time.” (City) Grondin was a good student with an average in the mid-70s and was paying for mental and physical health services with his student fees. It is not hard to see why many students like him feel that they are being neglected for the services they are paying for when help and understanding is only there for students with physical injuries.

A lot of responsibility falls into the hands of the administration to avoid situations as such. First and foremost, universities need to see that there are certainly not enough resources for students who are actively seeking for help. As psychologist Dr. Oren Amitay points out, the demand for the services is higher than the supply. Deciding to seek for help is already hard enough for most of these students, and when they can’t reach someone who may be able to help them, it ultimately reinforces the helplessness of their situation in their eyes. More available resources are a must if the universities want to properly provide the services to the students – the services the students are already paying for.

Next, it is absolutely crucial for the university and the lecturers to understand that it is not the student’s job to make their instructor understand their condition. It is the instructor’s job to be accommodating and understanding when a student approaches them with such an issue, whether it is a physical injury or an anxiety attack. If the instructor is concerned with the possible exploitation of their good will, a simple glimpse at the student’s medical record and past grades should be enough. Again, students shouldn’t have to convince their instructor of their condition; it is already hard enough for the student to deal with the stress over their health.

As easy as avoiding these kinds of situations may seem, the increasing rates make it hard for these precautionary steps to be put into effect. So, perhaps the most important and fundamental preventive measure could be the basic acknowledgement that mental health issues are as real as ‘physical injuries.’ Once this has been fully acknowledged, the rest of the change will come naturally.

Cover picture obtained from:

http://www.concordia.ca/cunews/main/stories/2014/02/05/the-reality-of-st…

Information obtained from:

http://www.citynews.ca/2016/04/22/you-dont-look-sick-student-claims-he-w…

http://www.macleans.ca/education/uniandcollege/the-mental-health-crisis-…

• anxiety
• mental health
• Mental Health Awareness
• uoft