The Canadian Mental Health Association has found that 20 percent of Canadians will personally experience a mental health issue in their life, with young people aged 15 to 24 more likely to experience mental health issues than any other age group. In 2016, a survey of 43,000 university and college students found that 89.5 per cent of students felt overwhelmed by all they had to do and 73.5 per cent felt very sad. At the same time, students are having a harder time accessing the mental health services they need on campus due to chronically underfunded, understaffed and underrepresented psychiatric services on post-secondary campuses.

Medication can often be an essential part of mental health treatment. However, the absence of a national Pharmacare strategy has left one in ten Canadians unable to fill their prescriptions due to the cost. Over two million Canadians incur more than $1000 a year in prescription drug costs alone. In the absence of universal Pharmacare, the Federation has partnered with Canada’s only not-for-profit health insurance provider GreenShield to coordinate our National Student Health Network. Through this service, we are able to offset the high cost of medication for students experiencing both mental and physical illness. To learn more about what’s covered through GreenShield, click here.

Through our mental health campaign the Federation advocates for:

• Accessible mental health services that are available on campus, when you need them, at no cost.
• Diverse mental health services that give you options. Not everyone needs the same type of support. You should have access to what you need, whether it is peer-to-peer support, services in you preferred language or texting a counselor.
• Intersectional mental health services that recognize and respond to the different contexts of students’ lives. Mental health cannot be separated from the oppressions that students face in and outside of the classroom every day.