Poster Presentations

Autistic students are increasingly represented in post-secondary settings (Schembri-Mutch et al., 2024), alongside a growing number of students who are questioning their neurodivergent identities (Overton et al., 2024). Autistic students are vulnerable to experiences of anxiety, depression, social isolation, and sensory overwhelm in post-secondary contexts (Grace et al., 2022). In response to emerging campus needs, two counsellors developed a psychoeducational group to support self-understanding, adaptive coping, and connection amongst students exploring Autistic identities.

The group, facilitated online to enhance accessibility, was delivered to two cohorts and yielded consistently positive participant feedback. Eight chapters of content guided weekly sessions, integrating psychoeducation with reflective discussion and experiential activities. Intentional emphasis was placed on fostering self-compassion, reducing stigma, and supporting empowerment throughout identity development.

This poster outlines the group structure, core content, and practical considerations for implementation, thereby offering a framework for counsellors seeking to support neurodivergent students in an affirming, accessible way.

Community referrals are a routine but increasingly challenging practice of post-secondary counselling. This poster incorporates survey responses from 60 Canadian counsellors to describe how community referrals are used in institutional settings with high demand, limited session availability, and complex student needs.

Respondents described spending significant time on crisis response and care coordination, with referrals often necessary for students needing ongoing, specialized, or intensive support. However, common barriers, such as long waitlists, cost, limited eligibility, and difficulty accessing primary care, meant that referrals did not always lead to connection with services. Respondents shared that some students disengaged from accessing referrals or were redirected to campus counselling, placing continued strain on services.

This poster presents these challenges alongside clinician experiences and recommendations. We highlight practical strategies to support effective and client-centered referrals, including how to introduce referrals collaboratively, prepare students for next steps, and support follow-through in resource-limited environments.

Anxiety is a prominent concern among Canadian post-secondary students (Ecclestone et al., 2025), contributing to academic disruption, psychological distress, and increased demand for counselling services. Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT; Hayes et al., 1999) offers an evidence-based approach to enhance psychological flexibility and support adaptive, values-based responses to anxiety.
This poster presents the development and implementation of an online ACT group for students experiencing anxiety. Eight psychoeducational sessions, supplemented by an interactive website to enhance engagement, were delivered across two student cohorts. Sessions focused on core ACT processes, including mindfulness, acceptance, cognitive defusion, committed action, and self-compassion. Participant feedback reflected increased psychological flexibility and strong perceived usefulness of ACT-based skills.

This poster outlines a practical framework for delivering ACT groups in post-secondary settings, including session structure, digital supports, and implementation considerations. Findings highlight the potential for structured ACT groups to promote student coping while extending counselling capacity in resource-constrained environments.

Post-secondary counselling clinicians are increasingly supporting students presenting with elevated anxiety, shame, perfectionism, and emotional dysregulation within brief, high-demand service models. This poster explores the practice-based integration of mindfulness and self-compassion interventions within CBT-informed and ACT-based approaches in campus counselling settings. Drawing on evidence-based literature, including Mindful Self-Compassion (MSC), as well as clinical experience, the poster highlights how these practices can support cognitive flexibility, values-consistent action, and emotional regulation, while addressing barriers such as entrenched self-criticism and avoidance across academic, relational, and identity-related stressors. Emphasis is placed on flexible, brief adaptations that support student engagement within the realities of campus counselling. A reflective lens is applied to clinical decision-making, including trauma-informed practice, cultural safety, and the ethical use of experiential interventions. The poster includes brief practice examples and reflection prompts inviting clinicians to consider how mindfulness- and compassion-informed strategies may be integrated within their campus contexts.

Adult ADHD is increasingly encountered in post-secondary student health settings, where family physicians are often responsible for initial assessment and management. However, diagnostic confidence in this context is not well characterized. This study aims to assess self-reported confidence among Ontario post-secondary student health physicians in diagnosing uncomplicated adult ADHD.. A cross-sectional survey will be distributed through post-secondary health services and professional networks. The primary outcome is physician confidence measured on a five-point Likert scale. Additional data will include years in practice, prior ADHD-related training, perceived barriers, and interest in further training. The survey will also assess whether access to an objective diagnostic support tool would increase physician confidence. Descriptive analysis will summarize confidence levels and identify gaps to inform targeted educational and practice supports.

In Canada, many Indigenous youth continue to leave their home communities to access secondary education. This practice reproduces structural features of historic residential school systems, including separation from family, culture, language, and land. Geographic remoteness remains a significant barrier to high school completion for First Nations, Métis, and Inuit youth, even when socio-economic factors are considered (Statistics Canada, 2023). Despite advances in digital learning and service delivery, secondary education infrastructure in many remote Indigenous communities has not meaningfully transitioned.

Neurodivergent students’ mental health is often addressed through the language of “needs” and individual support. Yet what is identified as a need often emerges in relation to institutional norms about how students should learn, communicate, regulate emotions, manage time, participate socially, and demonstrate academic competence. This poster proposes a critical reframing of neurodivergent students’ mental health in higher education by examining the norms that make certain needs visible. Drawing on the neurodiversity paradigm and critical perspectives on disability and mental health, it explores how distress can be produced or intensified by mismatches between neurodivergent ways of functioning and normative university environments. Rather than treating needs as individual deficits, this perspective highlights their relational and institutional dimensions. The poster invites universities to move from compensating for difference toward questioning the norms that make certain students experience psychological distress.

Social anxiety, a prevalent concern amongst post-secondary students, is associated with significant challenges in participation and interpersonal interactions in higher education settings (Archbell & Coplan, 2022; Clow et al., 2025). These challenges can limit opportunities for students to engage and connect socially, which is problematic because a sense of belonging has been identified as a significant protective factor for mental health (Campbell et al., 2022; Dietz et al., 2024). Emerging literature has started to explore tabletop role-playing games (TTRPGs) as therapeutic interventions that may foster structured social interaction and perceived social support through collaborative play (Kroplewski et al., 2025; Peralta & Wolfe, 2026).

This virtual poster presents the development and implementation of a Dungeons & Dragons (D&D) group for students experiencing social anxiety within a post-secondary counselling setting. This synthesis summarizes key ethical and clinical considerations and offers practical recommendations for game design and implementation to enhance student engagement.

The transition to post-secondary education is associated with increased alcohol and cannabis use, with co-use linked to greater harms. To mitigate harms, clarifying the psychological mechanisms underlying alcohol and cannabis co-use in post-secondary students is essential. Although impulsivity has reliably emerged as a risk factor for problematic substance use, its relationship with co-use among post-secondary students remains underexplored. Using an online survey, this study examined how impulsivity relates to alcohol and cannabis use frequency, quantity, and problematic use among post-secondary co-users (N = 237). Total impulsivity predicted problematic alcohol and cannabis use, with a larger effect for alcohol (ß=.348) than cannabis (ß=.227). While positive urgency emerged as the only significant predictor of alcohol outcomes, cannabis outcomes were not associated with impulsivity facets. These findings suggest that alcohol use may be more susceptible to emotion-driven, impulsive decision-making than cannabis use among post-secondary co-users, with cannabis use potentially influenced by contextual factors.