Arjun Kaul was in his second year at the University of Toronto when he started feeling severe anxiety. The situation wasn’t dire, but he says he began losing focus in class and developed trouble studying, even for his favourite subjects. He sought help through the school’s health and wellness centre, but says he waited nearly two months to see a counsellor.“The fact it took that long, I found worrisome,” says Kaul, now a fourth-year neuroscience major and vice-president of the school’s student union. “It wasn’t as though my case was a threat to my life, but I still wasn’t very capable of functioning as a student.”Kaul’s concerns aren’t uncommon at the University of Toronto, where demand for mental-health help is booming. Visits to campus mental health facilities have increased dramatically in recent years, with more students seeking the university’s help to accommodate mental illnesses, some of which stem from the stress of academic pressures and campus life. Calls to improve the university’s mental health services were amplified last spring after a string of suicides at the university’s downtown campus shook the city’s largest school to its core. After a student fell to their death inside the university’s Bahen Centre for Information Technology — the second death within a year to occur in that building — hundreds of students gathered outside university president Meric Gertler’s office to demand action from the school’s administration. Since then, many students have joined clubs and newly founded advocacy groups bent on finding solutions to what they see as a growing crisis. As they returned to classes this month, many came expecting change from the university.According to the school, visits to campus mental health facilities have increased nearly 30 per cent since 2014. In the 2017-18 school semester, the university provided more than 31,300 c ...
|
