A community of practice to promote campus mental health
Pursuing post-secondary education isn’t a simple experience. This major life transition may mean leaving home, learning how to live with others, building new support networks and finding a place in the world. The experiences can challenge well-being, but they also give opportunities to explore new ways to stay well on campus.
Healthy Minds/Healthy Campuses aims to improve overall mental health, reduce suicidal behaviour and reduce student substance use harms among students on BC campuses.
We use a Community of Practice approach to share and generate knowledge and promising practices. A Community of Practice model supports informal networks coming together with a common interest to work collectively towards common action. The model emphasizes horizontal, peer-to-peer communication and information-sharing rather than top-down approaches.
The community engages a broad cross-section of stakeholders at BC post-secondary institutions—from students to service providers to faculty and administrators—with a common goal of improving system responses. We achieve many of these goals by reviewing, developing and applying policies and standards. Healthy Minds/Healthy Campuses has established partnerships with over 20 post-secondary institutions BC and over 25 other agencies or groups associated with this work.
The lead partners for Healthy Minds/Healthy Campuses are the Canadian Mental Health Association (CMHA) BC Division and the Centre for Addictions Research of BC. Healthy Minds/Healthy Campuses is managed and coordinated on behalf of the BC Partners for Mental Health and Addictions Information by CMHA BC.
Activities + Priorities
Summit 2011 | Summit 2012 | Campus Capacity Grants | Changing the Culture of Substance Use Project
Healthy Minds/Healthy Campuses serves as a site for communication towards action within and between post-secondary institutions in BC, their communities and researchers. The overall goal is to support students' mental health and reduce risky substance use.
Our priorities Include:
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Staging a provincial conference to showcase leading edge practices for supporting student mental health and promoting healthy substance
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Engaging campus administration in addressing mental health and substance use problems on campus at a systems level
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Exploring opportunities for maximizing student voice and involvement in campus mental health promotion activities
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Maintaining an online space for campus community members to share initiatives and strategies used in the campus context
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Supporting a Community of Practice approach to the support of mental health and promotion of healthier substance use on campus
Join our community
Healthy Minds/Healthy Campuses is here to facilitate and support your discussions, but we can’t have a community without community members! We invite everyone concerned about wellness on campus to join the discussion and share their expertise, build new relationships, gain support for their work and take leadership in their communities.
We are keen to expand the reach of the project so that all post-secondary campuses in the province become involved. We are particularly interested in engaging a broad cross-section of campus community members including students, counsellors, staff and faculty to collaborate around campus mental health promotion. Campus representatives can decide how they would like to be involved, including participating in the online community, taking the lead on specific projects or helping to plan our annual conference. Email us to discuss how you'd like to be involved.
Learn more about our community at www.healthycampuses.ca >>
