Leading Mental Health Advocacy

Are you a graduate student interested in starting a mental health in your own department but don’t know how to get started? Then this guide is just the thing for you. Click on each of the sections below to learn how to advocate for graduate student mental health in your department.

  • One approach is to start as an ad hoc committee for your department’s Graduate Student Association and ask the president how to apply to become a standing committee, which could entitle you to funding for events and easier access to administrative support.
  • Another approach could involve contacting the Graduate Administrator for your department or program and asking about the process of developing a student-faculty committee in your department.
  • Recruit a faculty liaison to bridge communication between faculty and students; Develop a short report on the importance of faculty involvement in student mental health and have administrative coordinator or department chair email the report and liaison request to faculty. These documents can also be extraordinarily helpful during external audits of the program you are in, such as when external professors ask for feedback on student life and student concerns in the program. Leave a paper trail of such documents, such as posting them to your department’s Student Association, emailing them to listservs, or saving them to your group’s shared Google Drive.

Ideas for recruiting a team:

  • Have department administrative coordinator send out an email informing students about joining the committee
  • Post about joining the committee in any department-related social media groups or pages
  • Ask to speak 30 seconds before student seminars
  • Create a recruitment slide that can be shown as students file into student seminar
  • Ask to speak or create a booth at department events such as orientations and retreats
  • Pay attention to other student forums (ex. Slack groups) and the information that is shared there. Contact key active members who seem to share an interest in mental health and/or student advocacy and invite them to join.
  • Consider inviting people to join or work with you only for specific projects, rather than for an entire academic year: sometimes individuals are more likely to commit if they know exactly the duration of time they will need to be attending to the group’s needs for. For example, consider asking someone you know is interested in digital issues to work with you on a digital wellness workshop.
  • Use Google Forms / MS forms / Survey Monkey to create a free survey and ensure in the settings that identities of respondents remain anonymous. Ensure that you include disclosure information at the outset of the survey that explains what you will do with this information, whether any comments will be kept confidential, which parts of the information will be shared with whom, and whether the information will be saved.
  • Survey questions could ask:
    • Whether respondents are currently experiencing mental health challenges
    • Whether respondents have diagnosed mental illnesses or mental health disorders that affect their graduate student experience
    • Whether respondents feel that the graduate student experience is affecting their mental well-being, and why
    • What types of mental health supports students would like more access to
    • What types of mental health events students would be interested in (can provide options as well as allow respondents to input their own ideas)
  • Ask the administrative coordinator to send an email to all students in the department with the survey link. Post link in department-related social media groups and pages
  • Data from the survey can later be used as proof to faculty of student mental health needs within the department
  • Common stressors of graduate students:
    • Lack of mental health supports or services
    • Poor supervisor relationship/unrealistic expectations from supervisor
    • Lack of understanding of student mental health by supervisors
    • Isolation and loneliness
    • Poor work/life balance
    • Stress over how they compare to their peers, imposter syndrome
    • Pressure to publish data
    • Career Anxiety
    • Financial Stress
    • Focus your initiatives on the greatest needs identified by students in your department

  • Develop mental health resource sheet and have administrative coordinator email out to students. Make it a point to update this sheet yearly, before incoming students arrive.
  • Have your department email resource sheet to faculty members so they are aware, suggest they post on their office doors
  • Develop and put up posters about mental health resources in spaces frequented by students, if possible
  • Create a resource slide that can be shown as students file into student seminars
  • Create a Facebook page or other relevant internet hub for your committee and post about mental health resources and mental health events on campus. Avoid creating multiple new platforms when possible: if the students in your department already use a specific platform, try to use that for your needs to, in order to streamline your and their user experience and to increase traffic.
  • Identify, Assist, Refer Framework (IAR) is a training program at UofT designed to educate on what to say and do when you are aware that a student, whether yourself or someone you know, is in mental distress. It is strongly recommended that any members of mental wellness committees take this training program.
  • The training is available online at: https://iar.utoronto.ca/main/
  • Specific staff and faculty members at UofT are qualified to perform an in-person IAR training workshop to students and faculty.
  • You should encourage all students and faculty in your department to complete this training via your promotional mechanisms.