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Mental health refers to the well-being of your mind (how you are thinking, feeling and acting), while emotional health focuses specifically on your emotions (your ability to understand and manage your emotions). Both mental and emotional health can be influenced by a variety of internal sources (i.e., the way you talk to yourself) and external sources (i.e., relationships, stressors). The quality of your mental and emotional health can have widespread impacts on your life. When you are feeling mentally and emotionally well, you are likely better able to tackle your day-to-day tasks and can handle curve balls thrown your way. When your mental and emotional health is disrupted, you will likely have a harder time coping with challenges and looking after your daily responsibilities. In some cases, people experience long-standing symptoms of mental health difficulties that significantly impact their daily lives; these are called mental health disorders.

Common Challenges

There are common challenges to starting postsecondary studies for all students, whether or not you have a diagnosed mental health condition. Often, your workload has increased and you might feel more pressure to succeed than you did in high school or previous work settings. For some students, this is the first time you are living away from home; and, even if you haven’t moved, you are meeting an onslaught of new people all at once. Even though you are surrounded by new people, you might feel more isolated than you did before, given that you might be away from some of your well-established relationships with friends and family. However, there are also challenges that are unique to people, depending on their background, culture and path to postsecondary studies.

Students with learning disabilities or other conditions impacting learning might have more difficulties keeping up with the pace of the class, a multitude of deadlines and heavy reading and writing expectations in some programs.

Mature students might feel as if it’s harder to make friendships and interpersonal connections, given that their peers are younger. They also might struggle with balancing their family life and work expectations with their education.

International students might experience culture shock, language barriers and social isolation/homesickness.

Similarly, Indigenous students might also experience culture shock depending on where they are moving from to go to school (i.e., a city, a town or a reserve). They might also face a lack of sensitivity to their background and forms of subtle or overt prejudice and discrimination. Racialized students also might face a similar lack of sensitivity, prejudice and discrimination. Further, Indigenous and racialized students might be coping with moving to a community that is much less diverse than the one from which they came.

LGBTQIA+ students might also experience stigma and discrimination and might have barriers to forming romantic relationships, depending on the community they are in. All of these issues (and other issues not addressed!) can impact your mental/emotional health and well-being while in postsecondary.

Mental Health Disorders

Mental health disorders significantly affect the way one behaves, thinks, feels and relates to others. Consequently, there can be a significant relationship between mental health disorders and academic performance in postsecondary education. These disorders can result in many different symptoms that can either be consistently present or come and go in between waves of wellness.

Coping Skills

Having good mental and emotional health doesn’t mean that you need to be happy all the time; everyone experiences lows. Maintaining good mental/emotional health is about recognizing when you feel up or down and having the skills to manage those ups and downs! It is just as important to take care of your mental and emotional health as it is to take care of your physical health. Having good mental and emotional health will allow you to build resilience to stress, form deeper and more meaningful relationships, improve your self-esteem, and increase your energy to combat mental exhaustion.

If you are wondering if your mental and/or emotional health needs some care, look out for some of these warning signs. If any of these sounds like you, you may benefit from taking some time to care for your mental/emotional well-being. This is by no means a complete list, but some indicators of low mental/emotional health include:

• isolating yourself from friends, family, or coworkers
• lower energy than usual
• sleeping too much or too little
• eating too much or too little
• increased use of/dependency on substances
• racing thoughts
• lower performance at school/work
• more interpersonal conflicts than usual
• feelings of irritability, guilt, hopelessness, or worthlessness
• neglecting hygiene and personal care
• frequent negative self-talk

Self-Care

Taking care of your mental and emotional health is not always a straightforward task. The best thing you can do to maintain or even improve your mental/emotional health is to develop good coping skills. This way, when you start to feel overwhelmed by the stressors in your life, you know you have supports in place to help you take care of your mental/emotional well-being. This can include:

• practise emotional regulation
• be mindful
• be kind and patient with yourself
• stay connected
• take care of the physical (remember the benefits of exercise and sleep!)
• set goals and celebrate your achievements (even the small ones!)
• find meaning
• know when to reach out for help