Good health and well-being

3. Good Health and Well-being

It is important that the University looks after the health and well-being of students. We have already seen this in regards to providing cheap, but healthy food for students and staff. It is easy to see that healthy students means that there will be less extra resources needed to help people when they are sick. For example, relief teachers, or materials used to redo missed lectures, or seminars. In order to prevent sickness from occurring in the first place, or being proactive, there is a large Student Health centre on campus. This centre provides students with up-to-date health checks and advice, as well as treats students when they are sick.

The University maintains that good health and well-being means that the spiritual and mental health of students is also supported. Therefore, it is not just doctors and nurses that attend to students and staff, but a mixed team of chaplains and counsellors and various support groups.

For example, there is a student-led mental health group called Silverline Festival, or in Māori language (Ka Rikarika a Tāne, which is a Māori student mentoring programme). There is the Locals Programme, which takes students around the city to show them where particular things are, if they are not familiar with the area, for example, banks, supermarkets, second-hand shops, services, etc. There are also many “out-reach” programmes, which aim to support the many diverse students on campus. For example, the Social Impact Studio, Riding for the Disabled, and other voluntary projects.

All of the teams and groups mentioned above are supported by the Health Sciences at the University. The Health Sciences departments include a web of further support, such as the Centre for International Health, One Health Aotearoa, and the Otago Global Health Institute.

KEY VOCABULARY

1. area 2. occurring 3. impact 4. maintains 5. resources

6. projects 7. voluntary 8 mental

*Note: this vocabulary has been filtered through the Academic Word List from sublist 1 – up to and including sublist 5. Therefore, this course is designed to fit Intermediate Level English language learning students and above

DISCUSSION QUESTION:

How is mental health supported in your institution? What groups/people do you know that you can talk to if you emotional support?