SFU launches proactive mental health strategy
Erika Horwitz, 778.782.3197; ehorwitz@sfu.ca
Martin Mroz, HCS director, 778.782.3692; mfm@sfu.ca
Rosie Dhaliwal, 778.782.4655; rda14@sfu.ca
Carol Thorbes, PAMR, 778.782.3035; cthorbes@sfu.ca
Simon Fraser University’s Health and Counseling Services (HCS) is digging into Canada’s Eating Disorders Week (Feb. 6-12) in the hopes of taking a bite out of a mushrooming problem — mental illness among higher education students.
Coinciding with the Toronto-based National Eating Disorder Information Centre’s roll out of its awareness raising campaign, HCS’s registered dietician Rosie Dhaliwal will engage SFU students in signing a Fat Talk Free pledge on Feb. 9.
American statistics show that 15 per cent of women between the ages of 17 and 24 have eating disorders, which are considered psychiatric illnesses. Anorexia has the highest mortality rate of any psychiatric illness. It is estimated that 10 per cent of individuals with the disorder will die within 10 years of its onset.
Up to 40 per cent of higher education students have a disordered eating problem.
As of the launch of Eating Disorders Week, SFU’s associate director of counseling at HCS, Erika Horwitz, will be four days into her latest offering of Peace Program: Making Peace with Self and Food. The nine-week psychotherapy group workshop will give students strategies to help them manage disordered eating and body image challenges.
Horwitz is a psychologist and the mother of a university-aged daughter who struggles with chronic anxiety, panic and depression. The Burnaby resident, originally from Mexico, notes eating disorders may be the flavour of awareness in February, but it’s just one of many mental illnesses plaguing higher education students nationally.
Disturbing statistics have motivated SFU to implement a university-wide mental health strategy that few other post-secondary institutions are undertaking. It will enlist every student and faculty/staff member in recognizing, respecting and helping students with mental illness and its precursors. Its ultimate goal is to eliminate stigmatization and inspire compassion in an effort to reverse statistics indicating that up to 86 per cent of mentally ill students fail to complete their degrees.
According to 2007 National College Health Assessment results, one to 10 times annually, 39.4 per cent of SFU students feel so depressed it’s difficult for them to function and 65 per cent are depressed because they feel overwhelmed by all they do.
The World Health Organization estimates that by 2020, mental illness will be the leading cause of disability in the Western World.
Horwitz smiles when people bring up urban myths that purport SFU Burnaby’s grey tones in the winter inspire suicidal ideation. “Skyrocketing incidents of emotional and mental breakdown among post-secondary education students nationally, not just those at SFU, have to do with mounting stress.”
Horwitz adds: “Moderate stress can improve performance but sustained high stress becomes debilitating, leading to serious anxiety, depression and emotional breakdown. By week five every semester, which is about now, the number of students coming for counseling significantly increases. We may see as many as 50 new students in a week.”
“Mental health impacts overall wellbeing and student academic performance and success,” says Horwitz, whose own daughter’s anxiety has stymied her pursuit of a university education. “Students with psychiatric disorders are more likely to be employed if they can complete their higher education.”
Drawing on personal and professional experience, Horwitz believes SFU’s Mental Health Strategy will be successful only if all of the SFU community becomes involved, aware and compassionate. She says, “We need champions, supporters and believers in all areas of the university.”
Backgrounder: SFU engages everyone in beating mental illness
Among the dozens of initiatives SFU-HCS has launched to foster mental health:
- Engage individuals, groups and administrators across all disciplines in developing initiatives that will increase protective factors while reducing risk factors for mental health.
- Raise awareness of what contributes to factors along the continuum of mental wellness to mental illness; workshops to reduce stigmatism.
- Revise and update policies affecting finances and conduct-disorder to be more sensitive to mentally ill students’ needs.
- Maintain an up-to-date inventory of what every department at SFU is doing to support mental wellness.
- Through a new program called Support Over Suicide (SOS), train as many people as possible in the university community to become gatekeepers. They will recognize signs of risk, provide support, refer and follow up.
- An anti-stigma subcommittee is currently being formed. It will develop a strategy and recruit people to obliterate stigmatism on campus.
- A student behavioural-intervention team will identify at-risk students, identify actions to manage their situation and help them achieve success at SFU.
- An online support program is educating students about the addictive nature of social media and how it can deepen isolation and depression. New SFU e-support also has an interactive sleep diary to help students modify harmful habits.