Tayyab Rashid

This presentation provides insights into suicidal behaviour from existing literature and surveys in post-secondary settings as well as insights from a study on the correlates and predictors or suicidal behaviours. The presentation also highlights who improves and what facilitates improvement, treatment and how many see treatment and engagement. 

The Campus Mental Health Community of Practice from the Canadian Association of College and University Student Services has been conducting surveys on the evolving needs and trends of post-secondary institution (PSI) counselling centres evolving needs over the past two years and in April 2020, the survey was modified to reflect COVID-19 realities. More than 60 PSIs participated in this survey, with representation from each of the ten provinces and territories and colleges (24%). The data compares the COVID-19 related challenges with prior data and information from emerging practices at an international level. This report presents synthesized perspectives of campus mental health service professionals, administrations and student affairs administrators on crisis management, how to respond to most vulnerable students, ensuring accessibility, inclusion and ethos of social justice from multiple perspectives.

The Strengths-Based Resilience program is designed to help students develop resilience. The program defines resilience as the ability to cope with adversity and invites students to reflect actively on their experiences that demonstrate various aspects of their resilience. By reflecting back on these experiences, and engaging in other exercises, they learn skills and strategies to build their resilience.

Based on Corey Keyes’ model (Keyes, 2007; Keyes et al., 2011), the Flourish program teaches students to use their strengths to do well and feel well, pursue academic and meaningful co-curricular activities and learn skills to bounce back from setbacks quickly and adaptively.