Excerpt from ROI Utilization Report by: Rachelle Innocent, written in 2017
**Sources have not been modified from the original text**
INTRODUCTION
The Canadian Mental Health Association tells us that suicide is the second leading cause of death in students between the ages of 15-24. The National College Health Assessment released in 2016, found that 59.6 percent of students experienced feeling hopelessness in the previous 12 months, with 44.4 percent feeling so depressed they felt they could not function.
Over half a million made the transition to student life, as of September that just passed (2017). The annual student experience survey shows that almost nine in ten (87%) of first year students find it difficult to cope with social or academic aspects of university life. Other troubles that featured significantly included isolation (44%), balancing work and study (37%), financial difficulties (36%), and living independently (22%).
Grad students are known to take a psychological beating – in a 2014 study, the University of California, Berkeley, found that 47 percent of their PhD students showed signs of depression. Mental health problems at the postgraduate level globally are increasing, says Andrew Maine Wilson, chief executive of Association of MBAs, and curricula are changing in response. Top MBA schools are looking for ways to support students in cultivating the stress management skills required to excel in a high pressured and fast-paced environment, without triggering mental wellness concerns in students.
TRENDS IN INDUSTRY
In 2012, Queens University was moved by six student suicides to prepare a white paper on creating a robust mental health strategy. Universities are struggling to meet the demand of students and lack the capacity and the resources to support as needed. This year (2017), Guelph University has had staff going door-to-door in student residences to check on the mental health of their students follow four suicides there.
School administrations are looking for ways to proactively prevent mental illnesses as well as ways to cure it. Unprecedented demand for mental health services among young people today is raising alarm among medical experts and transforming financial plans of universities, businesses, and governments. Academic accommodations have also been rising, 143% at the University of Toronto, since 2009. There has been a 344 percent increase in calls to the Mental Health Helpline run by ConnexOntario since 2010, people aged 25 years or younger. A major survey of 25,164 Ontario students by the American College Health Association showed that between 2013-2016, there was a 50 percent increase in anxiety, a 47 percent increase in depression and an 86 percent increase in substance abuse – suicide attempts also rose by 47 percent in that period.
The needs of our student populations are not being met by the existing infrastructure that is provided in academic settings. Traditional counselling resources are often under-utilized, and students have lack the vernacular to say what specifically is the root cause of their inability to cope, or effectively articulate to what extent they feel that they are ill-equipped to cope with the pressures that are demanded of them in an academic setting.
END NOTES
4 https://www.ft.com/content/e3824c38-81c3-11e7-94e2-c5b903247afd
5 http://www.huffingtonpost.ca/graham-baldwin/post-secondary-mental-health_b_16959220.html
6 http://www.huffingtonpost.ca/graham-baldwin/post-secondary-mental-health_b_16959220.html
7 http://www.huffingtonpost.ca/graham-baldwin/post-secondary-mental-health_b_16959220.html
Musings of a CogSci Nerd 