Investing in Our Future: Importance of Postsecondary Student Mental Health Research

Student mental health has become a focus of attention in Canada and across the Western world as postsecondary institutions grapple with how to respond to an unprecedented increase in demand for mental health services. Universities and other postsecondary learning institutions have an obligation to provide a healthy environment that fosters student well-being and scholarship whilst ensuring appropriate resources are in place to support those with existing or emerging mental illness. Over 50% of high school graduates now attend postsecondary institutions, and therefore the student population increasingly resembles the emerging adult general population. The transition from high school to university life comes at a critical time of accelerated brain, intellectual, and psychosocial development coupled with exposure to a number of academic, social, lifestyle, and financial stressors. Moreover, adolescence and early adulthood represent the peak risk period for onset of mental illness. Until the developing brain fully matures at around age 25, transitional age youth require and benefit from external support and advice from parents, mentors and coaches—to guide and promote healthy self-regulatory behaviour and adaptive coping with stress and disappointment. Yet in the transition to university, students are exposed to a number of risk factors, including alcohol and recreational drugs. At the same time, students have to regulate their sleep, diet, and study schedules and form new peer relationships—all mostly on their own as some societal rite of passage and out of sync with the stage of their brain development