The Committee on Student Mental Health (CoSMH) voted to confirm the completion of recommendation 15, which calls for mechanisms to encourage faculty to address wellness and mental health as part of curriculum development. The Centre for Teaching Excellence (CTE) provides resources and workshops to support integration of mental health, resilience and support resources into curriculum and course development. Deans, chairs and directors will be asked to share messaging on CTE’s many offerings in faculty council, department and school meetings, and with sessional instructors.
Progress on recommendation 22 continues – a full-time resource for mental health training is in place, and the Do You Need Help poster has been distributed and is available upon request from Campus Wellness. Other portions of this recommendation will be undertaken by the Mental Health Literacy Training Steering Committee, or by the Orientation Steering Committee. The Academic Working Group has provided CoSMH with recommendations in response to 5 and 7, and the committee will review their findings at our next meeting.
The incoming Federation of Students president, Michael Beauchemin, is joining CoSMH as a voting member for the 2019/2020 year, replacing outgoing president Richard Wu.
A working group to address the verification of illness process has been formed, and will be focusing on recommendations 2 and 3 specifically. Membership includes representation from Campus Wellness, AccessAbility, the Registrar’s Office, Centre for Extended Learning, associate deans, Feds, and more. The group meets once monthly, and will report back to CoSMH on a regular basis.
Chair John Hirdes continues to participate in a Canadian Standards Association and Mental Health Commission of Canada effort to develop the National Standard for Psychological Health and Safety of Post-Secondary Students. He will lead the group that will identify data requirements, indicators, and benchmarks for the standard. The draft standard will be available from August to November 2019 for public feedback, with the final standard released in mid-2020 for early adopters to begin implementation.
Stay updated on our recommendations and more through the CoSMH website!
