The “first step” on a journey to better mental wellness on campus
Members of the University of Guelph community gathered in Peter Clark Hall on Tuesday, March 14 to take part in a mental health town hall hosted by the University’s administration. The event was part of the University’s latest “We’re Listening” campaign to address mental health concerns on campus.
The event was well attended by members of the U of G community, including both staff and students. The evening opened with remarks from U of G President Franco Vaccarino, who expressed a desire to raise the bar when it comes to mental health services, starting by listening.
Vaccarino identified mental health as a moving target, saying that Tuesday night was the first step on a journey and an opportunity to dive deeper into these issues.
“I’m really proud that the U of G community is making this a priority,” said Vaccarino. “We really want and need to hear voices across the community.” Following the president’s address, the audience was encouraged to get up and move around to a number of stations set up around the room. Many students were surprised by this approach, as the event was advertised as a town hall and this method of engagement differed from the traditional format.
Instead, people were intended to travel to the different stations throughout the duration of the two-hour event and voice their concerns through participation at these stations.
At each station, participants were able to write on sticky notes and put them up on a board. Stations included a “Wall of Hope” for positive messages from one Gryphon to another; a “Sharing the Caring” board on which people wrote about ways that people feel supported when they need it; and a “Dear Future Gryphons” board.
Participants were also invited to offer feedback on what they liked and what could be improved about the current mental health strategy at U of G, ranging from training and education, to campus culture, to assessment and evaluation. Another board allowed for input on how participants would want to support people at various levels of wellness.
Another station hosted postcards in which participants could fill in blanks for “If you really knew me, you’d know…” and “My biggest struggle right now is…”
Sticky notes posted around the room before the event translated feedback the University has already received into a series of “I need…” statements. These statements reflected a variety of concerns, with recurring themes of academic issues, demanding workloads, financial concerns, managing stress, and need for social support.
Booths set up on one side of the room advertised current organizations offering mental health and student support on campus, including Good2Talk and Student Life, among other services. There were also short forms available to provide feedback on whether or not participants had gone to support services. Students could indicate why or why not they had used the services, and what they found the strengths and weaknesses of each service to be.
In addition to the sticky notes and forms, one area of the room allowed for participants to sit down and provide more detailed feedback through the use of empathy maps, which let participants write broadly about their mental health, school experiences, social life, home life, finances, and physical health.
The whole event was orchestrated by Overlap, a human-centered design firm that has been hired by the University of Guelph to assist in addressing the community’s rising concerns about student wellness; concerns that have largely arisen in the wake of four student suicides this past year.
Overlap advertises itself as bringing empathy into organizations and using human-centered design methods to effect system-wide transformation. The firm places an emphasis on using qualitative data to explore all relevant aspects of people’s lives, in order to solve the problems at hand by understanding how people experience them. Overlap has worked in a variety of sectors, from healthcare to energy and hydro, and has also worked with other postsecondary institutions including the University of Waterloo and Wilfrid Laurier University.
Regarding the town hall, a statement on the University of Guelph’s website reads, “We know we can’t reach everyone with this initial engagement. We want you to know this is just our first step.”
Photo by Mariah Bridgeman/The Ontarion.