Your Anchor in Student Wellness
Welcome to Student Anchor, your dedicated resource for navigating the challenges of student life with a focus on mental and emotional well-being. We understand the unique pressures students face, and we're here to provide support, guidance, and a safe harbor as you pursue your academic goals in Vancouver.
Why did we start?
We recognized student mental health has always been and still is an extremely relevant issue, especially when taking into account today's society as a whole. In fact, it's actually one of the most statistically problematic issues currently in school systems (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention [CDC], 2023; Mental Health Commission of Canada [MHCC], 2022). If we dive a little deeper into the theoretical “how so?”, we see a general pattern. A pattern that reinforces the fact that students feel not only basic symptoms regarding stress, anxiety, depression, and burnout, but also face an extremely challenging symptom of complete emotional exhaustion (American Psychological Association [APA], 2022).
Well, here at Student Anchor, we asked why. It turns out that these side effects of being a student in the modern-day education systems are caused primarily by academic pressure and expectations placed on students by school departments and society as a whole (APA, 2022). These patterns very clearly shows us that student mental health challenges are 100% systemic (MHCC, 2022).
How our initiative addresses the issue
n response to this genuine and obvious issue, we created our label, Student Anchor, which, in a nutshell, is a student-run and led initiative that aims to make mental health support for students safer and easier to access both in person and digitally anonymously. Moreover, addressing the obvious elephant in the room, isn’t there already other ways for students to be helped?
Well, technically yes; however, despite the inherent yet undeniable presence of the thousands upon thousands of different counseling services and even more mental health resources online, a significant number of students will not, in their lifetime, even attempt to access these complicated resources, often due to a lack of clear information about how to seek help or general fear of being judged or misunderstood, and concerns that their struggles aren’t really serious enough (MHCC, 2022; World Health Organization [WHO], 2021).
Historical context
How is mental health reflected in school?
First of all, I would say that mental health is a rather misunderstood issue by students because of its complexity (Mental Health Commission of Canada [MHCC], 2022). For context, most students aren’t even conscious of their mental health and their mental health struggles (World Health Organization [WHO], 2021). In schools, we can see that it’s a space for academic learning and not much personal learning. For instance, success is almost entirely determined by academic performance and behaviour (American Psychological Association [APA], 2020). This model of success seems to exclude mental health as a key factor. The misconceptions around success all point to more practice and less breaks which does hold some truth but doesn’t show the bigger picture (APA, 2020). This mindset that is fixed on progress completely undermines the requirements like stable mental health and work life balance which are both crucial determiners of success (WHO, 2021). If this is the case then why is mental health neglected? Mental struggles and vulnerability are neglected because students have attributed them to traits of weakness, lack of control and have been taught these ideas throughout the generations (MHCC, 2022).
The result of these fixed mindsets are coping mechanisms like emotion suppression which actually produces more stress in the form of crashouts (APA, 2020). These crashouts happen when stress is no longer tolerable and all the emotion is let all at once, usually in extreme acts like violence, screaming, or breaking down (WHO, 2021). Moreover, these environments, not teachers, encourage students to work through stress without acknowledging its impact (MHCC, 2022). For example, a student may repeatedly neglect their mental health because of something like school workload. They might be able to pull through, but it’s guaranteed that they will eventually hit a wall, which is when their coping mechanisms fail and their character falls apart (APA, 2020). This collapse is known as burnout which is the product of overstimulation (WHO, 2021). But why does this happen so frequently? It happens because of the limited discussion surrounding mental health and how to treat it (MHCC, 2022). Moreover, students don’t know how to deal with academic stress in a way that doesn’t hurt their mental health as they see it as choosing one or the other (APA, 2020). In addition, we also recognize that burnout is a result of prolonged isolation and happens because of the idea that mental health struggles should stay private (WHO, 2021). This idea builds the foundation for the fixed mindset that most students have to which they don’t perceive mental health as a necessity (MHCC, 2022). Unfortunately, these norms will continue to shape how students view mental health even today because most have bought into the belief that failure is asking for help (APA, 2020). And even though there are more mental health services available, fixed mindsets and trauma in school systems will still continue to affect how these resources are seen (MHCC, 2022).
Root causes
In the deeply ingrained roots of our learning system, academic pressure, a general fear of being judged, a multitude of cultural stigmas surrounding mental health, and an all in all lack of both clear and accessible support (APA, 2022; WHO, 2021). Furthermore, the limited mental health education can additionally contribute to confusing and further preventing students from actually recognizing when they are in a state of mental distress or understanding where and when they need to turn to help (MHCC, 2022). Together, these factors create an environment where students struggle privately without proper support.
Implications
The implications of mental health issues that have gone unnoticed are extremely impactful in the long term. For one of the many examples, poor mental health that has gone unnoticed in the long term can lead to chronic anxiety and poor focus on school. This can cause the building of a habit, leading to reluctance to seek help later in their life (WHO, 2021). Student Anchor was thus created to reduce these negative impacts induced by rooted systemic errors by normalizing the act of seeking help, providing better access to resources, and creating a more accepting community overall.
