New Mental Well-being Group helping students make connections
With mental health a prime topic of concern among Guelph students, extra attention has been given to the groups on campus that provide student support. The Mental Well-being Group is one of the newer resources on campus designed to provide support for students.
Derived from the Student Support Network (SSN), the Mental Well-being Group is comprised of peers helping peers. The group meets once a week and discusses issues such as self-care, resilience, and resources that are available both on and off campus. One of the main aims of the group is to help build student networks by having students make connections with others in the group, who may be experiencing similar feelings.
“This campus is big and sometimes you can get lost in the bigness of it,” says Katie Wever, one of the group’s facilitators. “If you can start finding those groups where you can make that personal connection to someone else, that’s really great.”
Facilitators for the Mental Well-being Group are not trained counselors, but they do receive a considerable amount of training.
“Before we start off, we’re trained with communication skills, suicide awareness, [and more] before we actually start providing support for students,” says Simran Arora, another group facilitator.
“The services that we offer are a little bit different because we’re not trained counselors,” Wever says. “We’re there for active listening and support and then we also offer referrals to other organizations that can offer them support as well.”
The Mental Well-being Group has been described as an “overflow” service for students coming from both academic counseling and the SSN. According to one of group’s team leaders, Adele Heagle, this description is partly accurate.
“That’s definitely why we’re needed. That’s a big part of it,” Heagle explained, “but we do cater to the students needs directly as well, for students who might just want some mental health options, or any sort of support options.”
Being an overflow service, however, does raise concerns that students may become discouraged from being re-routed to different groups when taking the step to seek help.
“That’s definitely an issue that’s come up,” Heagle added. “The SSN, we’re always open, and then this [Mental Well-being] Group is just an added resource if they need that interaction.”
The need for so many support groups could point to an increasing prevalence of mental health concerns on campus, but Wever believes that these concerns have always been there.
“I don’t know if it’s becoming a bigger problem, I think people are talking about it more… and [realizing] that it’s okay to talk about it,” said Wever.
The group also recognizes that everyone will have a different experience with counseling and mental health services.
“I hope that people wouldn’t feel discouraged and recognize that there are lots of different tactics and resources to try out on campus,” said Heagle. “Generally, I think it’s really wonderful that our students are starting to get passionate about awareness and issues and urging each other to seek out support.”
The Mental Well-being Group meets in Raithby House every Monday from 5:30 p.m. to 6:30 p.m.
Photo by Mariah Bridgeman/The Ontarion.