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Students who were already having difficulties with mental health saw everything shot down, including therapists, psychologists, and others. It has undoubtedly been a difficult period for everyone. Now, colleges and universities have to put up with the damage to students’ mental and physical health caused by the pandemic.
Initial problems
Secondly, it has to be remembered that most higher education institutions have not dealt with mental health issues for a long time. Colleges and universities have always offered mental services facilities, but there was a significant load of students needing help and just a few experts dealing with them before the pandemics. The situation has not changed a lot by now.
But what is more is that currently, the universities and colleges have to deal with the mental issues connected to the damages caused by Covid19. Some students are suffering because of the consequences of the depression caused by isolation. Others are still suffering because they lost someone they knew to the virus, and in the case of international students, they even might not have had the chance to be near their family when these tragic happenings occurred.
One solution to the lack of staff and costs to support mental health counselling for an even more significant number of students than before is peer counselling. For instance, peer to peer approaches in learning is becoming more and more popular. They have proven to be effective since there are no barriers between peers, and they can create a community in which they feel safe to come up with ideas, share and present them. That said, why not raise the peer-to-peer techniques to the mental health counselling level?
Peer-to-peer counselling
Peer-to-peer counselling could moreover be combined with online and digital services. It could be a good idea to do a digital service out of it, to have an all-day-long service at the students’ disposal in need. It would significantly reduce the costs for the higher education institutions and raise the range of the number of students receiving help.
The students assisting will also feel better because they will feel they are doing something good. Moreover, college or university leaders should consider paying those students to earn from counselling or provide these students with some extra school credit. Of course, counselling should be constantly monitored by bots and by experts; moreover, the intervention of an expert should be of use in most complex cases. Peer counselling would be helpful to also for building a solid university or college community for networking.
Physical health
And, finally, the physical health. There are many college or university students who are eager to get vaccinated because they do not want to deny themselves the opportunity to attend lessons if the vaccination requirements become mandatory. But some others do not want to get vaccinated. Since this happens because many families are not adequately informed about the vaccinations, universities and colleges should become new information hubs where students could gather information on vaccines.
Moreover, students will be expecting the universities and colleges to adopt usual health and health-and-safety measures such as sanitizations, mandatory mask-wearing (at least indoors), vaccinated staff, etcetera. Besides, as long as online teaching is concerned, there is no guarantee that the lessons will remain entirely online. Most probably, the use of blended formats is going to be the winning solution.
ASOMI College of Sciences will do its best to provide students with mental health support facilities. Besides, the sanitization, social distance and other health norms are going to be respected at ACS. Additionally, ASOMI College of Sciences offers a wide range of blended and online courses of all kinds, including mentoring facilities. Click here for a closer look.
