Key Learning Points

This training opens up the conversation about mental health to increase understanding and reduce negative stigma surrounding mental illness. Key learning points of the training include the following:

• We can all play a role in supporting students’ mental health.
• Mental health and wellness can be viewed as a wheel in which we’re keeping many different dimensions in balance.
• Resilience can help us deal with stresses and challenges when the wheel is out of balance.
• Mental health can be viewed as a continuum, and we are all on some point the continuum at any given time.
• We can make a difference to a student in distress by knowing how to recognize the signs of distress, responding empathetically, and knowing how to refer the student to other resources.
• Staff and faculty are not expected to and should never diagnose or act as a counsellor, and they should be aware of their own boundaries and need for self-care.

Know the Procedures and Contacts at Your Campus and in Your Community

Consider your post-secondary institution’s resources, procedures, or policies for helping students in distress and make sure you are familiar with who to notify during the day, when the campus is open, and at night or on weekends, when the campus is closed. Procedures for non-emergencies will vary from institution to institution.

Find out what on-campus and community resources are available that support student mental health, or create your own contacts sheet to share with participants (or have a website ready for viewing on-screen).

Preparing for In-Person and Online Sessions: Practical Considerations

• Before giving a session, read through the Guidelines and Tips for Facilitation section and reflect on your own experiences and feelings about mental health.
• Download the slide deck and make any needed modifications.
• Read through the facilitator’s guide and handouts to familiarize yourself with the content. You may want to download the guide as a PDF file and print it.
• Prepare to give a territory acknowledgement to open the session. Also consider ways you can Indigenize the content. (See Indigenous Considerations.)
• Read through the scenarios and think about which scenarios you want participants to discuss. There are six scenarios to choose from, but it’s unlikely you’ll have time to cover them all. You may want to prepare a handout with just the scenarios (no responses) so participants can work through the scenarios and consider what to say before they see the suggested responses in Handout 2.
• Consider how many participants you expect to attend. The facilitator’s guide assumes a small to medium number of participants (approximately 6 to 30); if your group is large, you may need to modify some of the small group and reflection activities.
• Add relevant examples and additional insights that are based on your own experience or are relevant to the student population at your institution.
• Prepare the handouts. Either have them ready to hand out for an in-person session or have the links to the PDFs ready for an online session. Determine how you will share handouts and other resources, particularly when you are facilitating an online session. You can put PDFs in the chat, share a link in the chat, or email participants after the session.
• Have your institution’s workshop evaluation form ready to give to participants after the session.
• Consider providing participants with group guidelines before the session so people can prepare and create guidelines together. This will save time during the session. See Group Guidelines for more information.

Preparing for an In-Person Session

You will need the following:

• Laptop
• Projector
• Flipchart or whiteboard and appropriate markers
• Copies of Handouts 1 and 2 (see Handout 1: Wellness Wheel and Handout 2: Responding to Students in Distress)

You will also need to consider where participants can go if they need to leave the session for a while. Is there a place where they can sit that is close to the classroom? Arrange in advance for someone to check on anyone who leaves the session, whether a co-facilitator, an assistant, or another participant.

Preparing for an Online Session

If you are offering the session online, there are a few additional things to do in advance:

• Schedule a meeting time in your post-secondary institution’s preferred video-conferencing platform.
• Make sure that the screen-share function is enabled for sharing slides.
• If you will be using the chat or breakout rooms, make sure they are enabled.
• Share the meeting link and any passwords with participants before the session. (Consider sending the meeting information at least twice, including once the day before the session.)
• You may also want to share suggestions for online meeting etiquette for creating a safe learning space (e.g., sharing supportive comments, respecting confidentiality).
• Consider assigning someone to be the monitor responsible for responding to technical issues and questions posted in the chat.
• As noted above, make sure you have a plan for distributing any resources, such as the handouts, online. Remember to let participants know how and when they can expect to receive these resources.

Working in small groups online

If your video-conferencing software allows you to create breakout rooms, you can have participants work together in smaller groups. Take some time before the session to get comfortable with the process for setting up breakout rooms. It can be helpful to have someone assist you with setting up the breakout rooms during the session so you can facilitate while they handle the technical issues.

Breakout rooms will work well for discussing the scenarios, but you will need to do some preparation. It may be easiest to put the scenarios in the chat; if you are doing this, have the scenarios ready to add to the chat before the session. During the session, you can then assign each group to a specific breakout room to discuss the different scenarios. Alternatively, you could move participants into breakout rooms and then visit each room to verbally provide each group with a scenario.