IT TAKES A VILLAGE

When the COVID-19 pandemic began, Memorial University quickly shifted to online courses, but those weren’t the only offerings to go remote. The Student Wellness and Counselling Centre (SWCC) went virtual without skipping a beat, with hybrid face-to-face and remote services.

COVID-19 forced us to re-evaluate how we were offering our services, and led us to move our counselling sessions to virtual appointments only,” said Dr. Ken Fowler, director of the Student Wellness and Counselling Centre. “Through the transition to virtual learning, along with the uncertainty of what was happening in the world around us, it was critical to continue operating the SWCC so our students had supports available when they needed them most.

Demand for virtual counselling services skyrocketed, from both local and international students, who were completing their courses from their homes around the world. A portal was set up on the SWCC website so students could log in to request an appointment, rather than having to phone.

“COVID-19 challenged us to look for new and innovative ways to support students,” said Dr. Donna Hardy Cox, associate vice-president (academic) students. “Whether it was virtual counselling, finding ways to provide services to students across time zones, implementing keep.meSAFE for international students, Ask the Nurse online, or introducing same-day sessions so students could meet with a counsellor without having to wait – our students’ well-being is always top of mind.”

The keep.meSAFE program provides international students with real-time and/or appointment-based support in 60+ languages for any school, health or general life concern at no cost. It is open to all full-time and part-time international students, whether in their home country or in Canada, and is available 24 hours a day, seven days a week.

For local students, to help meet the demand for counselling services, same-day counselling sessions were introduced at the beginning of the winter 2022 semester.

“Student requests for counselling increased, so in response, we created One-at-a-Time: same-day sessions that aim to help students address issues impacting them currently, so they can start tackling these concerns right away,” said Dr. Fowler. “Since the start of the winter 2022 semester, this service has continued to gain momentum.”

Prior to 2020, there were five physicians providing medical support at the SWCC. Now, there are 11.

“Staff have been working at the centre throughout the pandemic, providing COVID-19 tests and vaccines, supporting students in self-isolation and students in residence, as well as providing regular day-to-day medical services,” said Dr. Hardy Cox.

The work is being done not just by counsellors, physicians and other healthcare professionals. In addition to providing health and wellness services to students, other proactive work has continued, despite the increased pressure on the centre.

“We have graduate students with SSHRC grants doing research on the impact of COVID-19 on stress and substance use,” said Dr. Fowler. “We also have students from Nursing and Medicine researching the mental health of healthcare professionals, with the goal of ultimately enabling them to best help students like ours.”

One of those students is Kelsey Moore, a master’s of applied psychology science student in her final year of study at Memorial. For her work term, she has been working at the SWCC under the supervision of Dr. Fowler and Dr. Pamela Button, focusing on the online portal that was introduced at the start of the pandemic to coordinate requests for counselling.

“Students go to this portal, submit an SWCC Counselling Request Form, and receive confirmation of their appointment time,” said Ms. Moore. “We have collected data from this portal, and are analyzing trends in student requests at Memorial, which has never been done before.”

Ms. Moore has been able to statistically and descriptively analyze what specific trends they are seeing in student requests at the SWCC. Specifically, they are looking at what students are requesting counselling services for, how these requests vary throughout the year (i.e., different academic semesters), and how the pandemic has affected the number of requests the centre is seeing.

“The research we are conducting at the SWCC is extremely important because it is critical to understanding the mental health struggles of students at Memorial University – especially during the pandemic,” said Ms. Moore.

All these advancements, from hiring more staff, developing innovative programs and adding more supports, have been done because the well-being of Memorial’s students is – and always will be – the number one priority at the SWCC.