Mental Health Screening Week at UFV offers resources for the blues, worries, and burn-out
From Monday, Oct. 5 to Friday, Oct. 9, UFV Counselling hosted Mental Health Screening Week. During this week, students were encouraged to book a virtual or phone session and debrief with one of UFV’s counsellors through the Student Services desk. The Cascade reached out to department head and clinical counsellor Priscilla Ang to get the full rundown of this event.
According to Ang, “Mental Health Screening Week is actually an extension [of] the Canadian Mental Health Association’s Beyond the Blues event, which UFV has been involved in and hosting at UFV since 2003.” In previous years, the event was a day where the counselling centre would have a booth offering goodies, giveaways, PADS dogs, and confidential screenings. Because of the move to a virtual event this year due to the ongoing pandemic, it was extended to a full week to increase accessibility to students.
The counselling department’s goal for the event is to provide the opportunity to build awareness around mental health and wellness.
“There is a need to increase our awareness around these topics and the need to care for ourselves, now more than ever,” Ang stated. “The goal of this event is also to provide education and connection to resources to help support the wellness of the UFV community and decrease the stigma around mental health.”
As previously stated, members of the UFV community, being the students as well as the staff and faculty members, could call Student Services to book a screening with a counsellor. However, due to the continued stress of everyday life, it is understandable that not everyone may have had the time to book and then complete one of these screenings within the timeframe. To find similar resources outside of Mental Health Screening Week, Ang recommends heretohelp.bc.ca for a wealth of mental health resources.
For those who did take part in this event, Ang said that they can expect the results from their screenings to come with links to related resources where the individuals would be able to read and learn more about various topics relating to mental health. The debrief also aims to teach them ways to continue to check in with mental well-being and as a way to see if counselling was a resource the individual would want to continue utilizing going forward. The screenings covered a few different concerns a student may have, including one for overall wellness, depression, anxiety, and risk-drinking.
Ang also said that this would be a great opportunity for students to learn about the mental health services available to them through UFV.
“The screenings are not there to diagnose in any way; you can pick and choose which ones you want to do, and it provides an opportunity [to] have a confidential conversation with a mental health professional to learn more about your mental health and ways to support your own wellness,” Ang said.
The counselling centre runs other programming related to mental well-being regularly. Currently, they are running the three-part workshop series entitled, “Breaking the Cycle of Procrastination,” which has proven popular, and the centre is hoping to hold it again soon, according to Ang. At the end of October there will be the “Save Your Semester” workshop, a series of one-hour events relating to academic success and mental wellness. There is also the hope for a virtual series with the UFV Pride Collective which will discuss topics of interest to the UFV LGBTQ+ community. Resources and updates can be found at either their website or Facebook page.
It is good to see UFV holding a Mental Health Screening Week like this as a way to decrease the stigma of struggling with mental health. As well, this event serves as a reminder that mental health is as important as physical health and provides resources to help students with their well-being.
