University Student Mental Health Advocacy: A Human Rights and Equity Based Approach


Katie Aubrecht, St. Francis Xavier University

A critical disability studies (Goodley, 2014) perspective recognizes that internal mental hardships are influenced by external structures, processes, and interactions. To provide useful supports for people experiencing mental distress, knowledge of the interactions between social and mental life is needed (Horwitz, 2003). When people have more valued social networks, they are less likely to report feelings of being mentally unwell (Horwitz, 2003). To date, much of the literature on student mental health in postsecondary education has focused on relationships between students and their friends and families (Yubero et al., 2018), or students and professors (Allen, Lilly, Green, Kerry, Zanjani, Vincent, and Arria, 2020). Less is known about the social networks among students with lived experiences of mental health with other students who have shared experiences. This may be attributed, in part, to the readiness with which mental health is understood as an individual problem, and a failure to consider student mental health as the product of inequitable social structures and institutionalized values and ways of knowing. Recently, researchers have begun to consider whether and how civic participation, and/or participation in collective advocacy efforts on postsecondary campuses could be understood as a determinant of mental and emotional health and well-being (Mitchell, Reason and Finley, 2019). Indeed, advocacy is widely understood as crucial to ensuring the rights of people with mental health experiences and identities are maintained (Stomski, Morrison, Whitely, and Brennan, 2018). What student mental health advocacy looks like differs across campuses but also within and across student populations. While students with disabilities groups are growing on some campuses, students with psychosocial disabilities do not always feel seen or fully represented in and by such groups (Kain, Chin-Newman, and Smith, 2019). At the same time as such questions are being posed, there is also growing awareness of the ‘extra work’ student advocates do, and the consequences of this labour for students mental and emotional health and well-being, with attention to the disproportionate impacts on students from equity-deserving groups (Linder, Quaye, Lange, Roberts, Lacy, and Okello, 2019). We seem then, at an impasse – how to understand and support positive experiences and outcomes of student advocacy for diverse students with lived experience? Addressing this question is crucial to supporting equitable and inclusive postsecondary environments and experiences. Postsecondary student mental health is a significant challenge in Canadian society that has been intensified by COVID-19 (Statistics Canada, 2020). This presentation describes a university-community partnered study that examined the relationship between participation in campus-based mental health advocacy and inclusive and equitable experiences of university education in Atlantic Canada. The research design was framed by an intersectional disability studies analytical approach and involved multiple methods – a scan of publicly available information related to mental health student advocacy at universities in Atlantic Canada, a review of current literature, and focus groups with student leaders and advocates with lived experiences to understand and center First Voice perspectives. Study results emphasize the importance of students’ perceptions of professors’ support to positive experiences and outcomes of student advocacy for diverse students with lived experiences.

Non-presenting authors: Susan Hardie, Eviance; Mia Landi, St. Francis Xavier University; Tatianna Beresford, Dalhousie University

This paper will be presented at the following session: