University to launch addiction program
The University of Windsor is poised to become the first university in Ontario and only the second in Canada to offer students addiction-recovery support on campus.
The student-led group, known as Lancers Recover, will officially launch next fall under the guidance of assistant psychology professor Onawa Labelle.
Labelle applied for and received funding through the university’s Mental Health Strategy Fund.
“The comorbidity of mental health and substance abuse is something that should be treated together,” said Ashley Vodarek, the university’s co-ordinator of mental health and wellness.
“We’re very excited to see this program come to campus.”
While there are 138 similar programs available at U.S. educational institutions, the only other Canadian program launched last fall at the University of British Columbia.
“It requires a perfect combination,” Labelle said. “You need interested students who want to get the word out, who want to get things going and you need someone on staff to take it on as a passion project.”
Labelle provides the passion as someone who is 15 years deep into sobriety. Her initial inquiries around campus found a dozen students who identified themselves as in recovery and interested in on-campus support and she received “overwhelming” support from university administration.
Potential collaborators stepped forward from the faculties of social work, kinesiology, nursing as well as from the Student Wellness Centre and the Aboriginal Education Centre.
Labelle said the students already identified as in recovery were accessing community-based support programs.
“I’m a huge proponent of many pathways to recovery,” Labelle said.
“And being a student is a very specific demographic. They’re at a place where there’s a lot of drinking, a lot of celebration and not a lot of parental guidance. There’s a lot of coming of age for students in Canada.”
In her application for funding, Labelle wrote “the consequences of addiction have an impact on virtually all college and university campuses. Studies have found that 31.6 per cent of college students meet the criteria for alcohol or substance use disorder, while six per cent meet the criteria for a diagnosis of dependence.”
Using Windsor’s current enrolment of 16,321 — that means approximately 5,157 students could suffer from alcohol or substance abuse disorder and over 980 students meet the criteria for dependence.
Studies also show that four per cent of students with a problem will actively seek help each year, which would translate to potentially 246 students at the University of Windsor.
“Those are rough estimates but we know that students in university, they drink more than others,” Labelle said.
The Lancers Recover Program will hold a general-interest meeting March 31 at 4 p.m. in the student association’s boardroom at the CAW Student Centre.
There is also a website being cultivated at www.lancersrecover.com.
The initiative received $3,660 in university funding and has plans to raise another $3,400 for additional programming.