The Student Wellness Center is more than just a safety net, it's a proactive tool for building resilience and fostering a supportive community
With the increasing emphasis and research on mental health in recent years, the Student Wellness Centre has expanded its role to offer a variety of wellness programs. these programs work to support students at every stage of their wellness journey.
However, many mistakenly view these resources as a “last resort” for severe cases, overlooking the SWC’s primary role as a preventative and ongoing support system.
Balancing overall health can be extremely challenging while actively growing as a student.
Mental health is often neglected at the expense of deadlines and desires like staying up late to scroll on social media. With this neglect comes the misunderstanding that our mental well-being does not need to be consistently worked on.
Similar to how we try to stay physically fit through consistent efforts like working out, students need minimal effort ways to keep their mental needs met. The SWC is an underrated resource of the McMaster Student Union that is there to be part of your university journey.
Misconceptions and stigma around preventative care hinder the SWC’s aim to provide consistent and accessible support for students to thrive. Beyond counselling services, the SWC incorporates diverse therapeutic approaches like psychoeducation to help students manage emotions and stress effectively.
This approach shifts wellness from being something we think about only when we are particularly stressed to a long-term strategy. This can help students build resilience and maintain a balanced life alongside their university coursework.
Such preventative strategies engage students in actively identifying key stressors within their lives and building coping skills to adapt. This can prevent the buildup of challenges that might otherwise lead to burnout or severe stress.
This approach shifts wellness from being a one-time solution to a long-term strategy, helping students build resilience and maintain a balanced life alongside their university coursework.
The SWC’s reach goes beyond traditional mental health therapies, it includes sessions where students discover tools for self-expression and foster a sense of community. This supportive network is designed to empower students in their personal growth and well-being, emphasizing that help is there for everyone, no matter where they are on their journey.
This supportive network is designed to empower students in their personal growth and well-being, emphasizing that help is there for everyone, no matter where they are on their journey.
During the challenging transitions of university life, where students might be far from family and familiar support systems, the SWC is a place that students can turn to. It provides various community platforms for different backgrounds like women of colour and 2SLQBTQ2IA+ folks and works to foster an affirmative space to explore various aspects of your identity.
By engaging with the SWC early, students can build lasting habits that help them balance personal wellness with academic demands. Ultimately, the SWC is there for every student, nurturing a supportive environment where students can learn to thrive both academically and personally.
Travis Nguyen/Photo Editor
MSU Service directors talk about their plans for the upcoming hybrid year
While the pandemic certainly took its toll on student life, a group of dedicated student leaders have been working tirelessly to maintain essential mental and physical health support services. There are many services that aim to create a safe(r) space on campus for marginalized communities. The McMaster Students Union has five such student services: the Women and Gender Equity Network, the Student Health Education Center, Maccess, Diversity Services and the Pride Community Center.
SHEC is a service for any McMaster University student looking for health-related support, childcare resources and breast-feeding spaces. They also offer free health items such as condoms, pregnancy tests and other external health resources.
“As MSU SHEC, we are a completely peer-run health advocacy, information and resource connection service. We operate under a broad definition of health, recognizing that wellbeing looks and feels different to each person. We provide free health supplies and educational materials and are dedicated to promoting our four strategic priorities: sexual and reproductive health, empowered bodies, substance use and mental wellbeing,” explained Anika Anand, the director of SHEC.
Similarly, WGEN offers peer-support services, but these are catered towards survivors of gendered violence and promoting gender equity.
“WGEN is a community-building and peer-support service run by and for women, trans and non-binary folks, as well as all survivors of sexual and gender-based violence. We focus on creating community and non-judgmental spaces among these folks through our safe(r) space, multi-event campaign weeks and peer groups. A big part of our mandate includes supporting folks through peer-support and free resources,” said Neha Shah, the director of WGEN.
Maccess, a service dedicated to disabled students on campus, on the other hand, is reorienting its disability activism strategy to not only raise awareness for disabilities on campus, but to actively advocate that disabled students on campus are invaluable to McMaster.
Maccess, a service dedicated to disabled students on campus, on the other hand, is reorienting its disability activism strategy to not only raise awareness for disabilities on campus, but to actively advocate that disabled students on campus are invaluable to McMaster.
“We are a peer-support, community-building and activism organization, run both and by disabled students. We use the term "disability" to include folks who identify as having a disability, mental health concerns, neurodivergence, chronic health conditions and addiction. Our priority this year is to move away from just the recognition that disabled folks exist on campus, to where we recognize disabled folks are valuable on campus,” explained Emunah Woolf, the director of Maccess.
Diversity Services is extending the services it traditionally offers and has plans on adopting the long-established peer-support system used in the past by WGEN, SHEC and PCC to further extend its avenues to provide support.
“Diversity Services works on celebration, advocacy and generally uniting all folks across campus that identify as religious, cultural and other minorities. We are joining Maccess, PCC, WGEN and SHEC in their practices with the pilot of our new peer-support services. These are taking place as community circles that are closed spaces for people to come in and find people with similar intersections of identity as themselves,” explained Sofia Palma Florido, the director of Diversity Services.
Amidst the uncertainties of an entirely online 2020-2021 academic year and a hybrid 2021-2022 year, these MSU services have been compelled to adapt to these circumstances. They have had to drastically alter how they reach and provide their services to students. Across the services, the directors found offering services with the same engagement, quality and reach to be some of the most pressing difficulties of an online environment.
“In our workshops we would commonly have events that promote learning and expanding students’ horizons. When we moved to an online setting, everyone involved, be it volunteers, executives or guests at our events, were already so affected by Zoom exhaustion that it was very difficult to execute everything to its full potential," said Palma Florido.
Nonetheless, Palma Florido has strategies to appeal to first and second-year students to get involved with Diversity Services. She hopes that these strategies will engage students who have not had the opportunity to physically or extensively interact with Diversity Services and the other MSU services.
“Particularly targeting first and second-year students, my goal is to create and facilitate spaces for these new students who have never been on campus to find community. So, allowing for spaces where people can create community with people that have similar lived experiences is something I cherish for myself, and I really want to make that happen for new and returning students,” said Palma Florido.
Services like SHEC have also experienced a shift in their culture and dynamics operating online.
“We operate using a safe(r) space protocol which is creating that supportive, non-judgmental environment. This aspect has been tough to create digitally, so it did involve a lot of training on digital responsibility for our volunteers and execs to facilitate safe(r) space online,” said Anand.
Anand remains optimistic however, finding brighter sides to the constraints of an online environment and even embracing some of the pros it has to offer.
“Although operating virtually has placed additional barriers on access and visibility, it has also provided an additional layer of anonymity for service users trying to access our space and peer-support. Service users may feel more comfortable accessing services since they are not seen walking in and out of space,” explained Anand.
For a service like Maccess however, an online environment has allowed it to open itself up to more students, namely disabled students, who were unable to access the service in person.
“We tried to shift our metric of success for events by focusing on quality over quantity. So, if we have a Zoom event that three or four folks got out to and we had a great conversation and we were able to offer them support and community, we consider that a success. In some ways moving online did allow us to have more accessibility, for example an issue we had in the past is that folks’ disabilities would prevent them from coming to the Maccess space on campus,” said Woolfe.
Woolfe also draws attention to the opportunities a newly online community brought to disabled students on campus.
“Previously we were not able to create Discords as an online community created a lot of liability issues, but to have a space where disabled and immunocompromised folks could meet one another from their room or hospitals was a really positive thing we could do. It allowed us to provide captions, extended hours and other accessibility needs,” explained Woolfe.
Shah is viewing the online Fall term of WGEN as an opportunity for expanding WGEN’s services to meet intersectional and survivor communities’ needs online now, and to plan for a gradual opening to in-person activities.
“This year, we are planning on providing similar services that we did last year, but hopefully with more options to access these both online and in person. Julia, the assistant director and I have also planned to increase our focus on two key areas of our mandate: survivors and ease of access. We hope to increase the amount of programming we provide to survivors, especially with a focus on intersectionality — so providing closed spaces within our identity-specific events,” explained Shah.
Like the approaches taken by SHEC and Maccess, Shah is also mindful of student accessibility needs, and has ideas to make the WGEN space even more inclusive to student accessibility needs.
“We are working to address how it can be really intimidating to enter our safe(r) space, that there are many misconceptions about peer-support, and that there are also some concerns about accessibility about our physical space. We hope to work with other services to address these concerns,” explained Shah.
McMaster students are strongly encouraged to seek out support from MSU services if needed.
McMaster students are strongly encouraged to seek out support from MSU services if needed.
As the funding period for Hamilton’s only overdose prevention site draws nearer to a close, community organizations and stakeholders have come together to push for the continued existence of opioid support services.
In 2017, 87 people in Hamilton died as a result of opioid overdose. This represented a death rate 72 per cent higher than the average in Ontario. According to the Office of the Chief Coroner of Ontario, the number of opioid-related deaths in Hamilton has almost doubled over the past 10 years.
Additionally, sharing needles can make people more vulnerable to blood borne infections. In 2016, there were 230 newly diagnosed cases of Hepatitis C in Hamilton, 32 per cent higher than the provincial rate.
Supervised Injection Sites
One method of harm reduction that the city has pursued is supervised injection sites, which aim to minimize the risks associated with the injection of drugs.
An SIS is a place where people bring pre-obtained illegal drugs to be injected in a clean and supervised environment. SIS staff members are trained to respond to overdoses and can connect clients to other support services.
In December 2017, the city of Hamilton funded a study to assess the feasibility and need for an SIS in Hamilton. The study analyzed health and crime information as well as qualitative data from community stakeholders.
In a survey conducted as part of the feasibility study, 80 per cent of people who inject drugs stated that they would use an SIS if it were available.
The study found that an SIS would be likely to have community benefits, such as lowering needle litter and reducing stigma towards people who inject drugs.
Multiple case studies have found that the presence of an SIS has safety benefits for individuals who inject drugs and can lead to fewer opioid-related deaths and illnesses.
A 2011 retrospective study of a Vancouver SIS found that fatal overdoses in the surrounding area decreased by 35 per cent after it opened. To contrast, overdose-related deaths in parts of the city with no nearby SIS decreased by only 9.3 per cent.
Furthermore, the presence of clean needles reduces the risk of blood borne illnesses such as Hepatitis and Human Immunodeficiency Virus.
However, SIS are not without their risks, perceived or otherwise.
The 2017 Hamilton feasibility study found that perceived risks included police monitoring of SIS and the potential to be identified as patients at the SIS. There were also perceived community risks of increased crime, and that the perception of an SIS may create a negative image of Hamilton.
Overdose Prevention Sites in Hamilton
In June, the Shelter Health Network and partners opened a temporary overdose prevention site at Hamilton Urban Core Community Health Centre. Unlike SIS, which are permanent facilities that require federal approval, overdose prevention sites are temporary facilities approved by the province that address an immediate need.
OPS facilities can be set up in a matter of weeks. As a result, many cities use them as building blocks to eventually transition to a permanent SIS.
In June, there were 112 clients using the overdose prevention site at HUCCHC. By August, this number had risen to 332.
So far there have been a total of 11 overdoses, all of which have been treated on site.
Currently, the temporary overdose prevention site at HUCCHC is relying on $116,300 of provincial funding. However, this money will run out on Nov. 30.
Provincial Funding
The Ford government has put on hold the opening of any new OPS or SIS and withhold the extension of funding for current sites.
The Hon. Christine Elliott, Ontario Minister of Health and Long-Term Care, has stated that it is necessary to review the merits of OPS and SIS before opening new ones or extending the funding periods of current sites.
One of the Ford government’s main concerns is the issue of rehabilitation. According to Elliott, further study is needed to determine whether SIS and OPS help with rehabilitation.
“What is happening that is saving lives? What else can we do to save more lives? Are there other examples that we should be looking at besides supervised injection clinics,” Elliott asked during question period on Aug. 13.
The decision to withhold funding has sparked backlash. According to official Opposition leader Andrea Horwath of the New Democratic Party, the immediate needs of people who rely on SIS and OPS are of utmost importance.
“People can’t get treatment if they are dead,” she stated during question period on Aug. 13.
Other stakeholders have also expressed concern about the decision to put funding on hold. In an open letter to Elliott, the Registered Nurses’ Association noted that SIS and OPS have already been proven to save lives, and therefore should not be subject to a review period.
“Preventing deaths from overdoses must be treated with the same rigour and commitment as other avoidable deaths that are not stigmatized. We all share the responsibility and consequences of further marginalizing extremely vulnerable groups,” the letter states.
What Is Being Done in Hamilton?
Currently, Shelter Health Network is pushing to extend the funding period for the OPS.
Additionally, De dwa da dehs nye>s Aboriginal Health Centre and Wesley Urban Ministries have put in applications to Health Canada to house permanent supervised injection sites. However, the approval process for a permanent supervised injection site can be complex and can take years.
Hamilton city council has expressed support for the continued existence of SIS. On Sept. 17, the Hamilton board of health, a standing committee of the city of Hamilton, voted unanimously in favour of a motion to write to the provincial health minister in support of SIS.
Approximately 20 McMaster medical students lobbied city hall to bring the motion forward. According to second-year medical student Debbie Brace on behalf of the group, the data clearly demonstrates the benefits of SIS.
“People will die without these sites. It’s pretty clear cut,” Brace said.
Ward 3 city councillor Matthew Green echoed these sentiments, noting that without the maintenance of safe injection sites, people will be forced to inject unsafely in public spaces.
“If we know that this is happening, the question is: ‘do you want to have it to happen in a safe space or an unsafe space?” Green asked. “And do we want to save lives or not?’”
What Now?
While Hamilton city hall has expressed support for the sites, decision-making power rests on the provincial and federal governments.
Elliott has said that a decision will be made by the end of September.
Hamilton relies heavily upon opioid support services. The decisions that will be made in the weeks to come will have major impacts on the Hamilton community. Until these decisions are made, the safety and well-being of OPS clients across the province remains unclear.
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