From the Provost’s Desk (March 2026)

Continuing to improve student mental health: accessibility and accommodations

I’m excited to share with you some of the ways we are continuing to improve student mental health at U of T. As I’ve written about before, student mental health is a central priority for the university. Over the past few years, we have made enormous strides in supporting students with mental health and wellness concerns. Last year alone, over half of the 106,000 appointments made at our Health and Wellness Centres (HWCs) were for mental-health-related concerns (53,706 appointments).

The roll-out of single-session appointments at our campus HWCs has virtually eliminated wait times for students to access counselling. We have also developed a spectrum of resources and interventions to meet students where they are in their mental health journeys – self-guided activities, mental health promotion, peer support, guided learning, group therapy, specialist care, and crisis support and care team planning. We are now focusing on streamlining our mental health, accessibility, and accommodations processes to better serve the students who rely on them.

Many of you may have observed an increase in the number of students requiring accommodations for mental health and ADHD or other neurodevelopmental conditions in recent years. Our evidence backs this up. In the past five years, the number of students registering with Accessibility Services (AS) on the St. George campus grew by approximately 50%. In 2024-25 alone, 1,400 more students registered with AS than the year before – an increase of 22% (where enrolment at UTSG increased by only 12%). Moreover, we are seeing that for many students, neurodevelopmental conditions are co-occurring with mental health concerns, such as depression and anxiety.

This means that coordinating supports for students with complex conditions across U of T’s HWC and AS units should help us more effectively address those students’ needs and support the University in offering appropriate care and accommodation as required. To that end, last July our HWC and AS teams launched a pilot of an integrated pathway that allows, with a student’s consent, both clinicians and AS staff to share information that will streamline their access to assessments and supports that better meet their needs (i.e., counselling, medical treatment, accommodations). Whereas in the past, these students were responsible for navigating the complexities of these systems on their own, the new pathway engages clinicians and staff resources to more efficiently support the student.  Access to the pathway is available to students who are identified by our HWC and AS staff and who present with a higher degree of complexity. To date, the pathway has supported over 180 referrals and enabled better planning for students who need both health services and where indicated, academic accommodations.  

The pilot has also enabled us to expand interprofessional health expertise at U of T. We have brought on our first mental health nurse practitioner at the UTSG HWC and introduced a dedicated facilitator position at AS. These new positions will help us increase our service capacity and further develop our specialized expertise to better support the growing population of students with concurrent mental health and ADHD conditions. Most importantly, this coordination will help ensure that fewer students fall through the proverbial cracks and that more students are able to thrive here. Moreover, the pathway will also decrease some of the time and work that currently falls on instructors in supporting the accommodations needs of our students – a challenge that we know is top-of-mind for many faculty members.

The initiatives we have launched at U of T are making a real difference – not only to individual students but I believe also to the postsecondary sector as a whole. Our work is groundbreaking, contributing to mental health research, and providing models for mental health care that can be applied at universities and colleges around the world.  

I am extremely proud of what we have been able to accomplish in a relatively short time. The hard and visionary work of Prof. Sandy Welsh, Vice-Provost, Students; Chris Bartha, Sr. Executive Director, Student Mental Health Systems Policy and Strategy; Dr. Kristin Cleverley, Rossy Chair in Campus Mental Health at the Bloomberg Faculty of Nursing; Dr. Andrea Levinson, Psychiatrist-in-Chief, Health and Wellness; Janine Robb, Executive Director, Health and Wellness; Heather Kelly, Executive Director, Student Life; psychiatrists and program administrators at CAMH; and the outstanding teams at our tri-campus Health and Wellness Centres and Accessibility Services offices is transforming student mental health at U of T and significantly improving the lives of many of our students.

As faculty members, you can be confident in referring students who may be struggling with their mental health to our HWCs. More information, resources, and contacts for you, your students, and their families can be found on our updated student mental health website at mentalhealth.utoronto.ca. I encourage you to explore it and learn more about all the steps we are taking to support students who may need a hand up at U of T.