Fourth suicide has Guelph reeling
University says it needs help to meet the growing demand for mental-health services
Sarah O’Marra feels a creeping pain when she thinks about Riley Lynch. There’s a pounding of her heart and a constriction of her lungs when thoughts of her friend pop into her head.
Lynch, a fourth-year physics student at the University of Guelph, was fascinated with the workings of the universe. He was a lover of nature who never wanted to stay indoors, an artist who sketched everyday objects around him. He died by suicide on Jan. 19. Lynch was the fourth University of Guelph student to take their own life since September.
It is the highest number of student suicides the school has ever seen in a single academic year.
“(It’s) very unusual,” said Brenda Whiteside, the university’s associate vice-president for student affairs, adding that there have been years when as many as two students have died by suicide.
The string of tragedies has generated serious concern in the student body about the quality and availability of mental-health care on campus.
An online petition, calling for “change and transparency” in the school’s mental-health services received more than 2,800 signatures within two weeks.
School officials and mental-health experts say universities cannot be the sole source of help. They need the support and partnership of outside care providers to adequately meet the growing demand for mental health services amongst students.
The majority of mental-health issues surface during a person’s teens and early 20s.
Because of age restrictions on many mental-health-care programs, young people are often forced to leave the services they have accessed for years, right about the time they begin university or college.
And life in post-secondary education comes with added challenges.
Taryn MacDonald, a student at Guelph, suffered from anxiety during high school and had small panic attacks when facing tests. She managed her anxiety with antidepressants. But things changed when she went to university, she said. There was more pressure and more competition from other students.
“Suddenly, we are at university and aren’t the top of our class anymore. We’re not the best player on our team. We can’t land executive positions on clubs like we used to,” Mac- Donald said. “At university, some of us are isolated from our families, our closest friends, pets, and other confidantes like teachers and coaches who previously helped silence the doubts. “No one who knows us well enough is there to tell us that maybe we aren’t acting like our usual selves, or that we seem sadder than usual.”
University of Guelph is now working with the Canadian Mental Health Association (CMHA) charity to address student mental health in the short and long term.
“The focus right now has been on this immediate situation and making sure students can get help,” said Fred Wagner, executive director of the CMHA’s Guelph and Waterloo-area branch. “We’re really trying to ensure that the counsellors at the University of Guelph have support, and that we’re able to fill in any gaps.”
That has included bolstering the university’s counselling services with CMHA staff and co-ordinating drop-in clinics where crisis professionals are available to talk.
CMHA and the university are also discussing long-term plans for mental health and suicide prevention strategies.
“It’s evident that universities are overwhelmed,” Wagner said. “There’s a huge increase in students wanting and needing to access mental-health services and I know Guelph has staffed up in terms of trying to address that need.”
Guelph currently has 14 counsellors, two psychiatrists, a medical clinic staffed by doctors with training in mental health, and specialized therapy groups. Residence workers are trained to provide mental-health support to the 5,000 students who live on campus. The university runs a peer support drop-in program that offers information, referral services and “non-judgmental listening,” noon to 10 p.m., Monday to Friday during the school year and noon to 8 p.m. during exams.
Students can also call a pair of local 24-hour-a-day, seven-days-a-week helplines: Good2Talk and Here 24/7.
Whiteside said the university will hold a town-hall meeting in the coming weeks to provide detailed statistics on its mental-health services, addressing some of the student petition’s requests.
But the role universities are expected to play in the provision of mental-health services has evolved.
“When I first started in this job, we used to think of counselling as shortterm transitional counselling. A student might be struggling with a relationship break up or something like that, and they’d need to talk through it for one or two (or three) sessions and then move on,” Whiteside said.
“Now you’re seeing individuals with complex mental-health issues and medication requirements.”
Some parents call the university before their child even begins classes, saying the student needs to see a counsellor once a week, Whiteside said.
“It’s pushing universities to say, ‘We’re not funded mental-health organizations, we’re institutions of higher education. So where does that onus (for mental-health support) stop or start?’ ”
While university counselling centres are generally well-equipped to deal with students’ short-term mental-health issues, Wagner said, they may struggle to meet the needs of students with more serious, longterm conditions.
Kayla Partridge was diagnosed with clinical anxiety while in high school. By January 2016, just months into her first year at Guelph, her anxiety had begun disrupting her studies and her personal life.
She visited the university’s counselling office and was set up with a counsellor, but had to wait more than a month for her next session.
“The lack of support and isolation I felt resulted in me being hospitalized,” Partridge said.
“I love the University of Guelph . . . One area we need to improve, however, is the resources available to students regarding mental health.”
Whiteside said no students are turned away from mental-health services.
“I really want to stress anyone who walks in that door is seen. They don’t have to wait four weeks to be seen,” she said.
But wait times can stretch from a week to four or five weeks when a student is seeking regular, ongoing, counselling, Whiteside said.
“If someone walks in that door and needs to be seen because they’re in a crisis situation and we’re concerned then they get seen right away.”
The demand for services simply outpaces university resources, Wagner said.
“There’s no doubt that the counselling services are very, very stretched.”
A major part of the solution is for universities to work in tandem with off-campus services, Wagner added. The CMHA has been on the front lines for other mental-health crises, such as the rash of teen suicides in Woodstock, Ont., in 2016. And, Wagner said, the organization has learned some lessons about effective prevention measures.
“The big lesson from Woodstock was about bringing all of the partners and all of the community together so that everybody is aligned and . . . information can get out in a way that everybody knows where help can be sought,” he said.
Brittany Danishevsky, leader of the Guelph campus chapter of youth mental-health charity Jack.org, said education on the availability of mental-health services is still lacking.
“There are many resources on and off campus that are accessible to students that we at Jack.org are really trying to push,” said Danishevsky, a student at Guelph. “(It) is what we’re working on right now . . . How do we shift the focus from, ‘Oh my goodness there’s nothing available,’ to, ‘Look there are these other things available, we want you to use them and feel comfortable using them.”
Another key aspect of improving mental-health care is ensuring lay people are educated on how to recognize when a friend is in need.
O’Marra said she would like to see the University of Guelph provide training for students in how to identify and help friends who are at risk of suicide.
Since Lynch’s death, she has been plagued by the thought that she should have seen his suicide coming.
“When it comes to mental illness, it is sometimes hard to talk to a stranger about our problems,” O’Marra said. “We, as students, have better access into our friends’ lives than any professional. If we are better able to recognize . . . potential signs, maybe we can direct our friends in the right direction.”
There are existing programs, Wagner said, that do just that, teaching lay people how to recognize when someone is despondent or having thoughts of suicide, what to say to them and how to connect them with the appropriate help.
Living Works, a global suicide prevention organization ran a series of these sessions at the University of Guelph in 2015.
The university’s Mental Health Framework, which guides how Guelph builds programs, includes a commitment to training staff and students to identify those in need.
“That’s all part of the conversation in terms of the long term (at Guelph),” Wagner said. “How do you get students and faculty to be aware so they can be aware and recognize those signs and then know how to provide help?”