AMLÉ recently attended the annual Healthy Campus Health and Wellbeing Seminar, which was held in TUD Grangegorman.
There was some important updates provided on areas such as the revisions to the Student Mental Health and Suicide Prevention Framework, and the revisions to the Student Survey. We also heard some feedback on the reporting structures for the Healthy Campus Framework. This is all important because in order for these frameworks to best serve and support students, they need to be reviewed regularly to make sure they are fit for purpose and meeting student need.
There was a talk by Michael Walker, who is the Participant Manager with Student Sport Ireland. Evidence has shown that sport and exercise, or moving your body in some way, can have a positive impact on mental health and wellbeing. It is great to see collaborations between different sections of the mental health sector around supporting student mental health in an accessible way.
We also heard about the E-SHEILD programme, which aims to reduce drug-related harms among students. This might not immediately seem obviously related to mental health, but evidence shows that substance use can have a detrimental impact on mental health. We also know that many people use substances to self-medicate as a way to cope with their mental health struggles or their life stressors. While the obvious choice would seem to be to tell people just to not do drugs, we know that that is patronising and unhelpful. Instead AMLÉ promotes the idea of harm reduction. This means things like making mindful decisions regarding substance use; if you do use substances, the recommendation is to start low and go slow; and AMLÉ will seek to inform and promote alternatives to substance use. The E-SHIELD programme is based in UCC and has similar aims to AMLÉ’s stance on substance use. It will be interesting to see how this project progresses over the next while
A student-led project in TUD has led to the publication of a Healthy Campus Cookbook, which has healthy recipes aimed at a student budget to help you eat healthily while at college. There are two volumes, both of whch are available for download. Volume one can be found here, and volume two can be found here
The event finished with a panel discussion about integrating wellbeing into the curriculum in higher education. If we are serious about student mental health and wellbeing, then it must be part of everyday college life, and must be infused through the regular teaching and learning of higher education. The panel discussion the importance of this and also the challenges of making this happen.
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