Good evening! I apologise in advance for the length, but I have so many things to tell you all!

First, I want to thank everyone again for your continued support! The thing that inspires me the most is reading all of the messages from those who want to help make a change for the better at our school -- it’s wonderful to see everyone coming together to support one another in this dark time.

A few updates and points to mention:

1. We (Julia and I) had a meeting with Janine Robb, who was receptive to the concerns we raised. She acknowledged that changes need to be made. Here are some of the main issues, many of which were sent in by the students who have been reaching out to us in the past few days, that we let her know that students are currently having:


• The 20-appointment cap needs to be changed to allow continued support. Twenty sessions simply isn’t enough--students should be able to receive unlimited support throughout their entire university career (and if necessary, referrals to outside clinicians to allow for continued support after graduation)

• The long wait times at Health and Wellness are unacceptable

  • Both hours (especially hours during exam and midterm seasons) and staff should be increased 


• Many students don’t know the services that are offered or where to access them

• The Health and Wellness website is difficult to navigate

  •  One thing that I noticed is that one of the first numbers we are told to call is 911, which is of course useful if you’re having an emergency, but isn’t practical to call when you want to reach out to schedule an appointment or speak with a mental health professional about non-emergency (but still important!) matters

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• Many students are scared and/or feel intimidated to reach out

• Many students feel isolated — we need to feel like we are a part of a community when it comes to proactively and reactively dealing with mental health 


2.

• We pitched several suggestions on how to improve these concerns — I’ll be posting more about those in the coming updates.

• We are currently in talks with a local young adult mental health services centre to potentially organise a way for students in to access their services on campus right away (this will hopefully temporarily decrease wait times until UofT can deal with the larger issue of finding a way to permanently decrease wait times at Health and Wellness)

• I have done an interview with the Toronto Observer, a local newspaper that is running a story about the mental health crisis at UofT. I’ll post where to look out for that in the next few days! 

• Our journey is still far from over—there are still major systemic changes that need to be made at our school in order to address the problem; however, I’m hopeful that everything we’ve been doing in the past few days has been a start.

• One of the biggest things we can do is continue to raise awareness about the problem. The more we spread the word, the harder it becomes for the University to simply ignore the issue. 

• Whilst we have been working hard to come up with suggestions, it’s important to remember that it is ultimately up to UofT to decide what changes to make and how to go about implementing them. In the coming weeks, we can only hope that they see how dire our situation truly is and actively work to fix it.

• Janine Robb has asked me to gather 15 students who are passionate about making a change and would like their opinions to be heard for a focus group that will be taking place on Monday 25 March - in order to get a diverse range of opinions, I’ve decided to leave 10 public spots available to students wishing to become more involved

  * if you or someone you know would be interested, please send a me PM via Facebook (Catherine Clarke) or Instagram (@basicallycathh) 

  * Please include your name, the reason you want to get involved, and a few suggestions about what you feel can be done to improve mental health services at UofT

  * I’ll respond to those who have been selected with more information - due to the overwhelming number of emails and messages I’ve received, please allow some time (i.e. a day or so) for me to reply!

  If you’ve read all the way to the end -- congratulations and thank you!
  * Catherine