“1 in 5” campaign seeks to raise awareness about mental health issues
With 1 in 5 Canadians expected to suffer from some form of mental illness in any given year, the University of Guelph’s Wellness Centre is delivering a full week of events to raise awareness and de-stigmatize the issue of mental health.
The “1 in 5 Mental Health Awareness Week” kicked off on Monday, Nov. 18 and runs until Friday, Nov. 21, with events taking place all over campus. The aim is to make students more aware of the initiatives in place to assist them in times of mental health crisis, and encourage more students to step forward with their problems free of prejudice and receive the help they need.
While the Wellness Centre acknowledges that feelings of anxiety and stress are inherent to the student experience – and should not be “medicalized” – these issues can play a large part in a student’s life. The centre seeks to alleviate these feelings, increasing both productivity and well being; and Mental Health Week aims to point the way to the appropriate offices and institutions on campus that can help.
“Although the topic of mental health and wellbeing has been more prevalent [recently], it is still a topic of conversation that holds a lot of stigma,” says Melanie Bowman, manager of the Wellness Centre and Student Health Services. “Not many people are open to talk about their own experiences or struggles with their mental well being for this reason. We aim to break down that stigma and encourage conversations about mental health.”
“We are so lucky to have so many different resources for people to maintain their mental wellness as well as get support when they are facing a mental health challenge or crisis,” Bowman added. “[These include initiatives] like Counseling Services, which offers free counseling for students, Student Health Services, Student Support Network (which offers peer-to-peer support with trained volunteers), the Wellness Centre, Residence Life, Student Life, and the list goes on.”
Even with all this in place, Bowman says that some students still fear being open with their own mental health challenges, due in part to the portrayal of these issues in popular culture.
“The media portrayal of the ‘crazy’ person or ‘deranged’ person is often sensationalized and therefore lacks substance,” said Bowman. “And worse, [it] can feed negative stereotypes about mental illness. People with mental health challenges are often portrayed as being violent in popular media, which is not the case. Very rarely are people with mental health challenges actually violent towards others. The bigger problem is that people with mental health challenges are more likely to be the subject of violence. The way mental health has been portrayed in popular culture in the past has definitely played a role in the way people think about mental health.”
This is the university’s third “Mental Health Week” since the program’s inception in 2012. The first event took place in March of 2012, and it was just a two-day event, and included a presentation by mental health advocate Eric Windeler about his son Jack, who suffered from mental illness and took his own life.
In November of 2012, it was expanded to include a full week of events, similar in style to this year’s “1 in 5” campaign.
“We added self-care components such as a stress management workshop and a restorative yoga class to build on promoting mental wellness among students, staff and faculty,” said Eve Lampert, Director of the U of G’s Wellness Centre. “We wanted to move away from ‘pathologizing’ all mental health concerns in hopes that this would decrease the stigma surrounding mental health.”
But are these events are actually making a difference? Are more people coming forward?
“We are evaluating each of our events this year in hopes to provide more concrete evidence, but we have always received positive feedback from students who attended different events in years past. There has also been great turnout at most of our events,” said Lampert.
The “1 in 5” program has since been adopted by universities throughout Canada. If that fact alone were any indication of the programs success, it would surely seem reasonable to conclude that the campaign does indeed foster understanding of mental health issues, in addition to promoting a positive attitude toward seeking help.