{"id":18634,"date":"2013-10-24T15:25:58","date_gmt":"2013-10-24T19:25:58","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.studentlife.utoronto.ca\/lifeatuoft\/?p=18634"},"modified":"2014-09-09T09:37:40","modified_gmt":"2014-09-09T13:37:40","slug":"minding-our-minds-unpacking-mental-health","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.studentlife.utoronto.ca\/lifeatuoft\/2013\/10\/24\/minding-our-minds-unpacking-mental-health\/","title":{"rendered":"Minding Our Minds: Unpacking Mental Health"},"content":{"rendered":"<figure id=\"attachment_18636\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-18636\" style=\"width: 584px\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\"><a href=\"http:\/\/blogs.studentlife.utoronto.ca\/lifeatuoft\/files\/2013\/10\/How-You-Doin.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-large wp-image-18636\" alt=\"Created with easel.ly\" src=\"http:\/\/blogs.studentlife.utoronto.ca\/lifeatuoft\/files\/2013\/10\/How-You-Doin-795x1024.jpg\" width=\"584\" height=\"752\" srcset=\"https:\/\/blogs.studentlife.utoronto.ca\/lifeatuoft\/files\/2013\/10\/How-You-Doin-795x1024.jpg 795w, https:\/\/blogs.studentlife.utoronto.ca\/lifeatuoft\/files\/2013\/10\/How-You-Doin-233x300.jpg 233w, https:\/\/blogs.studentlife.utoronto.ca\/lifeatuoft\/files\/2013\/10\/How-You-Doin.jpg 1254w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 584px) 100vw, 584px\" \/><\/a><figcaption id=\"caption-attachment-18636\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Created with easel.ly<\/figcaption><\/figure>\r\n\r\nAcademic panels and conferences can often be dry, which is why I mainly go for the free food. If I happen to learn something interesting, great; if not, I\u2019ll have made my case against the \u201cthere\u2019s no such thing as a free lunch\u201d crowd. But at Victoria College\u2019s Minding Our Minds conference on mental health in universities last Friday, I happened to get both a free lunch and learn a few things.\r\n<ul>\r\n\t<li><strong>Know what you can handle<\/strong><\/li>\r\n<\/ul>\r\n<p style=\"padding-left: 30px\">As a na\u00efve and arrogant second-year, I thought I could take on a six-course workload. And start a company. After a summer of working full-time and taking courses. And still be able to have all the fun I\u2019d had as a care-free first year. Obviously you can see where this is headed\u2026<\/p>\r\n<p style=\"padding-left: 30px\">I should have seen the second term burn-out coming because by then I was running on empty. At the pace I was going for first term, I had to take a reduced course load for winter term or face the pending implosion. I\u2019m pretty sure all the bells and whistles were going off but I had just hit \u201cdismiss\u201d (it\u2019s ill-advised).<\/p>\r\n<p style=\"padding-left: 30px\">Anyway, the point of the story is that it\u2019s okay. Being honest about what you\u2019re able to handle will make your life significantly easier in the long term. And that term with a reduced course load has had no significant bearing on my ability to graduate or otherwise do well in school. It probably helped, in fact.<\/p>\r\n\r\n<ul>\r\n\t<li><strong>Find your person<\/strong><\/li>\r\n<\/ul>\r\n<p style=\"padding-left: 30px\">This is advice that was given at the conference by Vic\u2019s Dean of Students, Kelley Castle. Finding your person doesn\u2019t mean finding a psychologist or professional help, she said. It can refer to finding a mentor, parent or good friend to rely on.<\/p>\r\n<p style=\"padding-left: 30px\">When those bells and whistles do go off and you keep hitting \u201cdismiss\u201d, you\u2019ll be sure to want to have surrounded yourself with people who can tell you that you should probably shift your priorities.<\/p>\r\n\r\n<ul>\r\n\t<li><strong>Get help early<\/strong><\/li>\r\n<\/ul>\r\n<p style=\"padding-left: 30px\">Not just limited to mental illness but to issues of mental health and academic advising in general, it\u2019s best to seek help early. Though there are services and staff who want to help and students who may need it, the two don\u2019t often meet until the situation is dire. At that point, dropping courses can be the only option.<\/p>\r\n<p style=\"padding-left: 30px\">Dropping courses can be a difficult decision considering students often have to do so after they have paid tuition. More lenient policies, such as those of other universities, help take the financial burden off students by back-dating the course drop so that the student is not financially penalized for it.\r\nPart of this delay in reaching out for help may stem from problems that begin before university does, said some conference presenters. Students in high school are often told to toughen up in preparation for university\u2019s more rigorous workload, different teaching style and lack of one-on-one attention.<\/p>\r\n<p style=\"padding-left: 30px\">In fact, there are perhaps more supports at university, from academic advising to peer support to health services. In university, you don\u2019t always have to \u2018be tough\u2019, as you may have been taught. But you do have to be willing to reach out.<\/p>\r\nLastly, it\u2019s important to remember that there are staff and faculty who are available to support you. And sometimes, they\u2019ve had a very personal connection to issues of mental health. U of T\u2019s own Chancellor, Michael Wilson, had begun the conference by talking about his son who had committed suicide and the impacts of mental illness on his family. Staff and faculty know that break ups, deaths and mental health crises happen and are likely more understanding than is often assumed. They are, after all, people too.\r\n<p style=\"text-align: right\">- Kay<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<div class=\"entry-summary\">\n<div class=\"entry-summary\">\nAcademic panels and conferences can often be dry, which is why I mainly go for the free food. If I happen to learn something interesting, great; if not, I\u2019ll have made my case against the \u201cthere\u2019s no such thing as&hellip;\n<\/div><div class=\"link-more\"><a href=\"https:\/\/blogs.studentlife.utoronto.ca\/lifeatuoft\/2013\/10\/24\/minding-our-minds-unpacking-mental-health\/\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading<span class=\"screen-reader-text\"> &ldquo;Minding Our Minds: Unpacking Mental Health&rdquo;<\/span>&hellip;<\/a><\/div>\n<\/div><div class=\"link-more\"><a href=\"https:\/\/blogs.studentlife.utoronto.ca\/lifeatuoft\/2013\/10\/24\/minding-our-minds-unpacking-mental-health\/\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading<span class=\"screen-reader-text\"> &ldquo;Minding Our Minds: Unpacking Mental Health&rdquo;<\/span>&hellip;<\/a><\/div>","protected":false},"author":199,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[62,1,66,6480,67],"tags":[86,78,153,88,9307,176,1439,286,85,25506,696,144],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.studentlife.utoronto.ca\/lifeatuoft\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18634"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.studentlife.utoronto.ca\/lifeatuoft\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.studentlife.utoronto.ca\/lifeatuoft\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.studentlife.utoronto.ca\/lifeatuoft\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/199"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.studentlife.utoronto.ca\/lifeatuoft\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=18634"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.studentlife.utoronto.ca\/lifeatuoft\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18634\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":18641,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.studentlife.utoronto.ca\/lifeatuoft\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18634\/revisions\/18641"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.studentlife.utoronto.ca\/lifeatuoft\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=18634"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.studentlife.utoronto.ca\/lifeatuoft\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=18634"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.studentlife.utoronto.ca\/lifeatuoft\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=18634"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}