Expanded Mental Health Trainings 

In 2024-2025, Health & Wellness expanded its mental health training offerings to give students, staff and faculty members more ways to build their confidence in supporting people with mental health challenges.   

Adding to its regular offerings of Identify, Assist, Refer; Identify, Assist, Refer Plus; and safeTALK, Health & Wellness also offered opportunities to complete Mental Health First Aid and ASIST, two in-depth training options for small groups.    

In 2024-2025, with these expanded offerings, mental health training was provided to 4,283 staff, students and faculty.

Mental Health First Aid is a full-day training where participants learn how to recognize signs that a person may be experiencing a decline in their mental well-being or a mental health crisis and have conversations to encourage them to reach out to supports.  

ASIST is a two-day suicide intervention training where participants learn how to engage with someone who may be thinking about suicide and develop an intervention plan with them.   

Leveraging the University’s partnership with Telus Health, Health & Wellness coordinated with an external facilitator to deliver the new trainings to U of T staff and students.  

To make it easier for students, faculty and staff members to find the trainings best suited to their schedule and learning goals, Health & Wellness also created a webpage that outlines the range of trainings offered. It also presented an overview of mental health trainings to more than 70 Student Life staff members to raise awareness of the opportunities available to staff in Student Life.