The shift to online learning and socialization has taken a toll on students, families, and educators alike. While remote life has been beneficial for some, the social strain of the pandemic has placed many young people, especially postsecondary students, at risk for a mental health challenge they may never have faced before.

In response, one postsecondary institution in Winnipeg has implemented a free mental health literacy program for students, with Niverville resident Kayla Hoskins at its helm.

On February 25, Manitoba Institute of Trades and Technology (MITT) announced that it was running a program called More Feet on the Ground, offering online workshops that increase awareness of mental health risk factors and how to identify them in yourself and others.

As an accessibility student advisor at MITT, Hoskins runs the workshops and helps connect students to the resources they need to succeed.

“This workshop brings together a diverse set of students who have varying ideas and experiences around mental health and how they share their feelings with others,” says Hoskins. “Some of these students have never spoken openly with others about mental health.”

Developed by the Centre for Innovation in Campus Mental Health, MITT is the first Manitoba school to offer the More Feet on the Ground program to its students and staff, and they want the public to know that it’s also open to anyone, even if they don’t attend MITT.

“It’s a free resource and anyone can sign up to take the two-day version,” says Hoskins. “The information is very applicable to other places, for anyone who volunteers or even in their workplace. We were just able to adopt the program and convert it into something that works well with students, but you don’t have to be a teacher or even in a student leadership position. Everyone can learn the skills to help be more aware of their mental health or if someone they know is struggling with their mental health.”

It is important to get more mental health tools into the awareness of the public, and postsecondary life can be an especially challenging time. According to 2019’s National College Health Assessment report, 31.1 percent of students felt overwhelming anxiety in the preceding two weeks and 20.1 percent felt so depressed that it was difficult to function.1

“The reason it’s so important is because it teaches us a common language around mental health, but it also helps us to have conversations around it and reduce that stigma,” says Hoskins, who has seen firsthand the program’s real, tangible impact. “It makes it easier to talk about mental health—and if we talk about it comfortably, it makes it easier for others to share with us. It’s something that’s come up for me personally and for my family. So I know it’s hard for people to share, when you don’t feel like you’re in good hands with someone. It’s hard when you’re wanting to talk to someone but you feel you can’t share with those people because they wouldn’t understand or judge you.”

Hoskins adds that the program teaches students to become more comfortable with mental health language and to normalize talking about it.

“We also take the approach that mental health is not all or nothing,” she says. “It’s not a label, like you’re either healthy or you’re not. Instead we show them it’s a continuum. Our mental health goes up and down, not just for people who have a mental illness. It applies to everybody. Sometimes our mental health is not good. Sometimes it is good. And that helps to put everyone on the same level.”

The Basics

More Feet on the Ground comes with the benefit of being offered entirely online, so anyone can access it from wherever they happen to be.

“It’s brief,” says Hoskins. “It’s not a six-month course; you can do it in two days. It is self-paced, and it’s very reader friendly. You start with the basics and you don’t need an advanced education in mental health in order to start. You start at the beginning and it breaks down the harder topics to bite-size pieces.”

It’s also highly interactive and includes breakout and discussion groups to keep the topics engaging and high-energy. Students who complete the content and live workshop receive a certificate.

“We teach that there are four R components to improving mental health. The first is recognize. We teach students to recognize the potential signs and how they may be different for different people. Then respond, which is the one that students or people in general sort of struggle really with. As in, if you do see someone and you recognize they are having difficulties with their mental health, they ask, ‘Well, what can I even do?’ The two-day workshop gives the confidence and ability to listen to someone who may be struggling with their mental health.”

The last two are refer and reflect.

Hoskins says that the program is useful in terms of referring people to access mental health resources in their area, wherever they are in the province. Learning about what types of resources exists goes a long way toward knowing where to get help should they need it or need to tell others where to get help.

Reflection, too, is an important part of self-care, Hoskins says. Simply listening and responding to someone else’s struggle can take a toll on a mentally healthy person and it’s normal to have to take some time to process one’s own reaction to another person’s challenges.

Benefits of Online Format

Hoskins, who has a Bachelor’s of Social Work, says that it’s been interesting to see how operating the program online has created a safe space for participants to engage with challenging material.

“I was happy to see that offering this in an online format didn’t even take away from the impact,” she says. “Students appreciate the opportunity to not only get together, but over a topic they all have some personal experiences with and discuss it in a safe space.”

While the online format may be new to some, Hoskins says the transition may actually make help more available to people who would never take advantage of it in person.

“Because of the pandemic, lots more resources are available online than ever before. And we are talking more about mental health challenges because we can see more and more of us are being affected by it,” says Hoskins. “The increase in online resources is becoming more prevalent because of the need.”

Hoskins also looks forward to being back in-person and offering the program at MITT in the future. But whether in-person or online, she’s just happy people are benefitting from it.

“In mental health, a lot of it is about connection and feeling you are understood. You can certainly do that online, but it is also a meaningful experience when you can do it in-person,” says Hoskins. “The buzzword of today is blended. I think if we can somehow combine the two, and people can choose what they prefer, that might work well. Whatever meets their need.”

Helping Students from All Backgrounds

Accessibility is a big part of Hoskins’s job, so decreasing barriers to mental health support is very important. She notes that the signs of mental health struggles may vary depending on diverse cultural factors.

“Increasing an understanding of mental health isn’t just one-way in our program,” she says. “We’re happy to learn from all of our participants, too. Sharing our stories decreases stigma and gives us all a common language to share as we discuss and understand these difficult topics.”

The material for More Feet on the Ground was originally designed for a diverse range of participants, but Hoskins says that hasn’t stopped facilitators from continuing to make improvements.

“Students often contribute ideas and help us learn new things, and we make notes about what they’re saying about their needs,” she explains. “There’s been a few times now where we learn we need to change up our examples to apply to varying experiences and backgrounds to look at that topic and be able to speak intelligently about that topic in ways that apply to many cultures.”

Students like Harwinder Kaur, a student in the Post Graduate Diploma program in Human Resources Learning and Development, credits the course with making a positive impact on her life.

“I dealt with homesickness and mental stress when I moved from India to Canada as an international student,” says Kaur. “This training has been very helpful. It’s helped me to understand positive mental health, how to recognize the signs if any of my friends are facing mental stress and has given me the tools to respond appropriately to someone who needs support.”

Community Creates Support

Before moving to Niverville in 2017, Hoskins and her husband came from small towns in northwest Ontario. They lived in Winnipeg for a while before realizing they wanted to return to a community with a small town feel.

“It was an adjustment for us, living in the city, and we had to do it because we were both going to school at the time,” Hoskins says. “Housing in Niverville was attractive to us and there are so many transplants here. We felt welcome right away.”

As an accessibility student advisor, Hoskins finds her job really rewarding. She says coming from a small town has made her appreciate the benefits that a small community has in its ability to include others.

“MITT is a small campus and it’s a small college,” she says. “You really get to know the students in a different way, compared to at the bigger colleges and universities. This is one of the benefits of being a facilitator for More Feet on the Ground, which is that I get to know some of the students really well. Some of them decide to stay in touch and it creates a community of support. Sometimes that community of support is one of the biggest deterrents to mental health deterioration. We just need to remember to cultivate it and learn to talk about our mental health as part of that community feeling—and that’s what the More Feet on the Ground program teaches really well.”