Concurrent Sessions

This presentation is themed around sexual violence on campuses. Attendees will be given the opportunity to explore, understand, and learn more about how to keep themselves and others safe from sexual violence on campus. This presentation will raise awareness of the real, social risks and concerns of sexual violence and human/sex trafficking on post-secondary campuses and within society. Education related to healthy relationships including; knowing your rights within a relationship, what consent is, and red and green flags will also be addressed. All people, but especially students are susceptible to sexual violence, abuse, and human trafficking. Sexual violence can be, and is in most cases a traumatic incident. When an individual experiences trauma, one’s mental health can be impacted and there are many different forms of trauma symptoms. This presentation will provide important information, including the signs and symptoms to look out for, that all students should know to keep themselves and others safe, in addition to keeping a positive mental health.

Research on 2SLGBTQ+ students’ mental health is growing, including studies examining the role of campus climate. Though insightful, existing research tends to focus on negative aspects of mental health, such as depression and suicide, and pay little attention to students’ multiple identities and resilience. To support the wellbeing of diverse 2SLGBTQ+ students, it is necessary to explore both negative and positive mental health, and identify ways to foster their resilience to adversity, including the role of institutional policies and initiatives. Guided by Positive Psychology, minority stress theory, and intersectionality, the presenters will address these topics by reporting findings from the Ontario-based Thriving On Campus study and the national study, Promoting the Wellbeing and Academic Development of LGBT University Students in Canada. Together with attendees, they will create recommendations for change on campuses and identify promising practices.

First Nations Technical Institute (FNTI) provides the opportunity for healthy, prosperous and vibrant learners and communities to come together through transformative learning experiences built on a foundation of Indigenous knowledge.

Students are at the heart of every post-secondary institution. Yet, many are struggling. As they navigate additional financial, health, and academic stressors – exasperated by the pandemic – students are doing their best to adapt, learn and stay well.

Thankfully, as work and learning environments are being re-envisioned, so too are student well-being strategies and supports. Canadian campuses are now looking to the National Standard on Mental Health and Well-Being for Post-Secondary Students, released in 2020, for flexible guidance to enhance their post-secondary initiatives, and reaffirm their commitment to student mental health.

In this presentation, the Mental Health Commission of Canada (MHCC) will bring together a panel, engaging student leaders in dynamic conversations on key topics related to the Standard: equity, diversity and inclusion, learning environments, data collection and evaluation, and student engagement strategies to drive Standard implementation.

These conversations will help inform and inspire post-secondary leaders as they look to keep students at the forefront of their decision making, look to celebrate their successes, and take further action to improve student mental health and well-being.

With public health restrictions lifting and the opening of shared spaces continuing, the effects of post-pandemic life on young people’s leisure behaviours are currently unfolding. The expansion of online gambling and single event sports betting in Ontario are occurring concurrently and stand to have significant impacts for young adults – men in particular. In these changing contexts, it is critical to educate residence life and peer education staff about gambling harms and increase awareness and knowledge of (online) gambling risks and risk mitigation approaches among students. With more than two years spent primarily in front of a computer, and with online gambling being one of the strongest predictors of gambling problems in young adults, digital wellbeing broadly is an important focus for Responsible Gambling Council (RGC).

The presenters will share results from two recently released reports Digital Well-being & Online Gambling and Gambling During COVID in Ontario as well as highlight RGC’s campus programs including its in-person activation offering, evidence-based and ethno-cultural specific social media posts, and other program components available to colleges and universities this fall.

Is your mental health programming in need of an overhaul but you don’t know where to start? Is there terminology in anti-oppressive practice that seems vague or irrelevant to your role in campus mental health? In this session participants will learn how to use the Anti-Oppressive Practice toolkit to support student mental health by employing a mutually healing approach on your campus (Atkins et al., 2022). Attendees will also have the opportunity to share examples of anti-oppressive practice they have seen in post-secondary education and consider how these practices can be enacted in mental health programming. By the end of the session, participants will leave with a new vision for centering anti-oppressive practices in their mental health programming.

The goal of the SAFER Project is to build the capacity of Canadian 2SLGBTQ+ and youth-service organizations to prevent and address Gender-Based Violence (GBV) against 2SLGBTQ+ youth including public forms harassment. This workshop will engage participants in learning how to prevent and address gender based violence faced by 2SLGBTQ+ Youth by sharing what we have learned regarding GBV against 2SLGBTQ+ youth in Canada, allowing workshop participants to share their experiences regarding GBV including street harassment, and expand our understanding of what has or has not worked in preventing and addressing GBV against 2SLGBTQ+ youth from their perspectives.

Much like the calls for change in the broader community, students, staff and faculty at the University of Toronto Scarborough (UTSC) have advocated for creating a differentiated model of mental health crisis response on campus; specifically, one that relies less heavily on campus police services and more so on mental health responders with specialized skills. Acknowledging that the reliance on Campus Police, who have typically served as first responders to student mental health crises on campus especially after hours, may create a barrier for some students in seeking supports and services, the Director of Campus Safety, Tanya Poppleton created the first ever, Student Crisis Response Coordinator role within the Campus Safety department at UTSC. Learn more about what led to the inception of this role; the purpose and mandate of the role and ways your institution can adopt the model on your campus.

CMHA Waterloo Wellington (CMHA WW) was approached by the University of Guelph to discuss the potential of replicating the IMPACT model on campus as a pilot project. In October 2021, CMHA WW launched the initiative. Support for students in crisis during the after hours has been a gap for a long time on campuses locally. The pandemic has intensified the need for additional support in the campus community during the evening and weekends.

This presentation will focus on validation as a critical tool to support post-secondary students post-pandemic. The Canadian Alliance of Student Associations explains that “in 2021, post-secondary students reported feeling stressed about their own health, their families and loved ones, their ability to find employment post-graduation, and their finances” (2021). While some think we need to move on from the pandemic, student stresses do not instantly disappear overnight. With this in mind, we are now at a crucial juncture where we can use validation to help struggling post-secondary students. Drawing from Stella’s Place’s work using Dialectical Behaviour Therapy skills with youth, and using role playing and interactive groups, the presenters will talk about what validation is, what it isn’t, how validation changes our brains, and how to effectively validate and empower students. This workshop will show how simple techniques in communication can help to alleviate students’ feelings of loneliness, isolation, and depression.

Over 24,000 Canadians have died from opioid poisonings between January 2016 and June 2021. Harm reduction education and access to take-home naloxone kits are key interventions in addressing the current opioid poisoning crisis. This was also identified as a need by University of Toronto students and clinicians, resulting in the development of an innovative and inter-professional opioid poisoning program inclusive of naloxone kit distribution and one-on-one and group training sessions on stigma related to drug use, drivers of the opioid poisoning crisis and how to respond to an opioid poisoning via simulation. This presentation will describe the facilitators and challenges they encountered in developing this program. In summary, facilitators included a pre-existing interest in harm reduction and naloxone training within the U of T community, presence of existing internal and external infrastructure, personnel and resources to advocate for and develop the program. Challenges that led to significant program refinement included navigating existing provincial and and institutional frameworks, processes and policies that govern who and how to access take-home naloxone kits and respond to possible opioid poisonings on campus.

This session will be a moderated conversation on student engagement, and how practices and programs support student mental health and wellbeing on Francophone campuses. The panel will consist of staff and students who will speak to new initiatives, established programs, and the impact of student engagement practices on student mental health.

This presentation will provide an experiential learning opportunity for conference participants. We will share our research project findings and feedback from student participants whose unique perspectives have informed the development of the project.

There will also be a live cooking demo by chef Joshna Maharaj during which participants are invited to cook along and ask questions.

To prepare for the session, or to simply learn about what other participants will be cooking during the session, you can access kitchen notes, which include a simple equipment and ingredients list as well as the recipe for a delicious sandwich that you can enjoy while attending your afternoon sessions.

We look forward to cooking with you during our experiential lunch-hour session and sharing our research findings on the impact that virtual cook-alongs and community kitchens have on student mental health.

Please see our website and Instagram to learn more about our project.

This session will include sharing a comprehensive suite of resources that were created through an eCampus Ontario project and led by the conference presenter. The resources were created through an EDI lens to target the hidden curriculum, which includes aspects of education we often expect students to know, but don’t explicitly teach. These resources were designed for educators to embed the skills/topics directly within their curriculum to have a greater reach and impact on students. By addressing skill development in the curriculum, educators can directly impact academic success and indirectly support student mental health. During the workshop, participants will have an opportunity to engage in a discussion about skill development in higher education and explore the resources to identify those that are relevant to their educational contexts. Participants will also be encouraged to plan when and how they can embed them within their curriculum.

In this interactive workshop, the presenter will share various Anishnaabemowin words that relate to relationships and self/community. Connecting with the language furthers our understanding to the Indigenous worldview as concepts like respect and reciprocity are embedded in the language. Using art therapy techniques, participants will reinforce the language learning and meaning of the words.

This session presents findings from a series of qualitative studies investigating the experiences of post-secondary students as they navigate social and institutional pathways through care to manage their mental health. The presenters will discuss the importance of critically evaluating how self-directed care pathways influence, intersect with, and teach us about student engagement with formal treatment. They will problematize a circumscribed approach to care pathways, encouraging us to imagine how individual expertise, community supports, and everyday interactions of care figure into networks of support on and off campus. They will also introduce the development of a web-based mental health app intervention that improves students’ access to resources through navigation of virtual pathways to care. This interdisciplinary research effort employs a unique, iterative approach to knowledge translation that collects accounts of post-secondary students’ lived experiences to inform the improvement of care, to promote service engagement, and to break down barriers to support.

This presentation will draw from Ontario Undergraduate Student Alliance’s (OUSA) published policy papers to guide their session. These are written and informed by students and will discuss municipal student engagement during the pandemic and the fact that students’ sense of belonging to the city their university is located in has declined over the past two years. This lack of interaction with a broader community has contributed to students’ declining mental health. The post-secondary experience extends beyond academia. University is a period where young Ontarians can develop their sense of self, usually through extracurriculars and exploring their local surroundings. With instruction transitioning to remote learning, how can institutions and municipalities continue to support students’ exploration of self and ensure they develop a sense of belonging to their new community? Student-driven policy solutions that adopt a whole-of-community approach and address the impact the pandemic has had on student mental health will be discussed.

The impact of cannabis on the mental health of Indigenous Peoples in Canada is largely unknown. Using the guiding principles of Two-Eyed Seeing, the presenters conducted Sharing Circles to hear the needs and experiences of First Nations, Inuit, Metis, Northern and 2SLGTBQQIA+ Indigenous people across Canada in relation to their mental health and cannabis use. Using gender-based and distinctions-based analysis, they created a list of four recommendations for post-secondary institutions, medical regulatory authorities, health, and social care providers to consider when caring for Indigenous people living with mental health issues. They will share an overview of their findings and recommendations for improving access to current information and best practices for Indigenous people who use cannabis for mental health.

This presentation will provide practical pedagogical strategies for educators and employees looking to enhance their practices with adult learners in post secondary education settings.

The presenters will draw from their recently developed “Promising Practices Manual ”, which is based on research informed by focus groups with diverse college stakeholders, community-based agencies, and research literature.

The presentation is founded on the belief that through integrating a Trauma Informed Education from an EDI lens, educators, and post secondary educational institutions, can move towards a more universal, preventative and harm reducing approach in education that benefits adult learners, educators, and employees. This approach will result in the creation of learning spaces that are more compassionate, supportive, and equitable, where students and educators can learn and thrive.

Representatives from a cross-campus collaboration at Toronto Metropolitan University will share their experiences of using a relational model to endorse and advocate for continuous commitment of leadership and long-term response to Truth and Reconciliation on campus. The presenters represent the Office of the Vice-President, Equity, Community and Inclusion, Human Resources, and the Office of Vice-Provost, Students.  They will share the origins of the committee which communicated available resources and supports to Indigenous students, staff and faculty in response to the uncovering of unmarked burial sites at residential schools, as well as share the successes of the collaboration through demonstrations of building relationships through reciprocity and responsibility. Examples of initiatives including traditional counselling supports and traditional healing circles will be highlighted. Lastly, the panel will highlight plans for future collaborative initiatives that will prioritize the needs and opportunities for the Indigenous community at Toronto Metropolitan University.

The goal of this training was to use a strengths-based approach in sexual violence prevention that educated the international student community on their obligations and rights as uOttawa students. The space needed to be culturally competent and educational. They also needed a space that students would feel safe to participate in since this topic has been a difficult topic to garner participation. The event had three times the normal number of participants expected with positive outcomes related to active participation. The success in the engagement was due to the special use of international student mentors that shared relatable stories with the participants. By connecting with them in a peer-to-peer basis, it was possible to further expand the discussion on this subject. Presenters will share the process on how a successful discussion amongst international students was created and the feedback received. They will further host an activity with the conference participants to plan similar discussion groups at their organizations.

Central to the college experience are the connections students forge with others. Research suggests that certain social support networks can modulate academic stress, but the closure of universities following COVID-19 has disrupted many students’ support networks. In response to this timely issue, the team investigated the effect of social support networks on the perceived academic stress levels of undergraduates. Their study includes three universities in Austin, Texas, and Mexico City, Mexico; this cross-cultural perspective offers unique insight. In this paper, they highlight results from their rigorous mixed-methods approach comprising: key informant interviews, focus groups, surveys, and descriptive statistics. They surveyed students across all three universities (n = 1,183) with the validated Perceptions of Academic Stress Scale, the Scale for Perceived Social Support, and demographics questions. To further explore the individual and societal contexts informing survey responses, they also conducted twelve co-ed focus groups (n = 87) with diverse student groups. They found statistically significant differences between males and females’ perceived academic stress. They also uncover insights into how scholarships can affect student stress. This presentation also focuses on the effects of three social identity factors—gender, socioeconomic status, and first-generation student status—on the perceived academic mental health of undergraduates. Sociological theory suggests that being male or having family who previously attended college are identities that can confer privilege in educational settings—thus calling attention to the academic stress of females and first-generation students. They uncovered statistically significant differences between the perceived academic stress levels experienced by male versus female respondents; insights from students in focus groups further explained these apparent gendered differences. They also found a significant relationship linking a student’s first- generation status to their perceived academic stress score. Finally, they present findings regarding how virtual classes can pose new challenges to students’ stress due to noise, unavailability of workspaces, and unaccommodating remote exam proctoring software. They provide the first comprehensive dataset regarding the intersection of students’ social support networks, academic stress, and the pandemic. The binational data also reveal potential insights Texas and Mexico can exchange. A set of recommendations is outlined, which are currently being examined by respective offices at the three universities.

Abstinence, or the elimination of all eating disorder symptoms and behaviours, is often regarded as essential to eating disorder recovery. Though eating disorders are increasingly being understood as products of social injustice, the common goal of abstinence fails to consider individuals’ unique experiences of marginalization as well as the realistic possibility of relapse. What should happen if an individual is not ready to commit to the end goal of abstinence, is unable to cease all eating disorder behaviours, or does not have access to timely, appropriate services/supports? These questions are paramount when considering how to adequately address the surge of eating disorders among post-secondary student populations as precipitated by the COVID-19 pandemic. In this presentation, the practice of harm reduction will be defined and articulated as a trauma-informed, social justice-oriented approach in the context of eating disorders. Actionable ideas for incorporating harm reduction-based support in post-secondary environments will be included.