Undergraduate students experience a high level of mental health concerns, however, current university supports have many drawbacks. An emerging body of evidence suggests the use of resilience-based interventions, which encourage individuals to cope and maintain optimal wellbeing despite adversity. Resilience is the ability to bounce back from adversity and is a process mediated by several risk and protective factors at the individual, familial and community levels. Thus, this environmental scan of a diverse cross-section of North American post-secondary institutions was conducted to provide further insight regarding the gap and areas of improvement for current wellness approaches, in order to inform the development of a potential resilience-based intervention to improve wellbeing outcomes in undergraduate students. A total of twenty-one institutions were examined; eleven in Canada and ten in the United States. Key characteristics of the wellness services provided at each institution were gathered through institutions’ websites and key informant interviews of wellness administrators, using a standardized data collection form. The findings showed that most institutions (16 of 21) offered some form of mental health programming, with individual counselling, group therapy and crisis management being the most common types of mental health services. Only 6 of 21 sampled institutions offered recurring resiliency programming, however, these programs have yet to be systematically evaluated. Overall, this scan was the first of the authors’ knowledge to evaluate publicly available sources regarding wellness services at post-secondary institutions, and provides a novel perspective by considering the infrastructure underpinning the accessibility and provision of such services. By: Ritika Arora, Masters of Public Health Student at McMaster University
PI: Elizabeth Alvarez