darren peters - macquarie university - student wellness: diet, psychology

Darren Peters, Director Campus Wellbeing & Support Services

Student wellness, diet & psychology

Presentation flow

2Darren Peters I Director Campus Wellbeing & Support Services

Main thesis: its all about the ‘plan’

Exercise, diet & psychology

There are associations between student mental health & personal relationships, living on campus, financial situation, sex, race & spirituality.

Students can experience depression, generalized anxiety, event driven panic attacks (e.g., exams) & suicidal ideation or self harm & poor physical, social & dietary behavior (s).

Some students seek help while most are reluctant however co-created health promotions such as The Desk, MindWise, system tools (Apps), & online screening & therapist assisted treatment (MindSpot) can encourage engagement.

Life plans

Wellness & wellbeing is reciprocally influenced by a diverse range of factors including personal & environment influences, we have a responsibility to optimize a student’s health, wellbeing & functioning while in our care.

To do this we must adopt more personalized communications, screening, development plans & care.

Therefore, I propose we encourage both personal & institutional multidimensional plans.

Health/wellness/wellbeing

Wellbeing is a theoretical construct comprising emotional, psychological, social & spiritual components.

Wellness also includes wellbeing & the biological & physiological systems & human functioning.

Our responsibility therefore must be discussed in terms of the personal self & functioning in the university environ.

What should we do?


Adopt a planned approach to change

If an individuals health and wellbeing is affected by material factors such as housing or neighborhood and psychosocial factors, such as relationships with

others, and behavioural and biological factors like genes, exercise and nutrition and we know that student wellbeing will decline overtime then we

have a duty to respond to this problem.

We can deal with this problem and achieve a great outcome by accelerating academic progression, changing the environment towards healthier

lifestyles, improving health literacy, enhancing personal & institutional planning capability, and providing individuals a diverse range of easily accessible information and services when needed including

short to medium term on-line or face to face interventions.

Health, wellness & wellbeing?

Health, wellness & wellbeing


Health

“a state of complete physical, mental and social well-being and not merely the absence of disease or infirmity.” (WHO, 1947)

Wellbeing

“is a theoretical construct which encompasses emotional(affects/feelings), psychological (positive functioning), social (relations with others) and spiritualconcepts (sense of purpose in life).” (Lindert et al., 2015)

Wellbeing Domains

Emotional health

Non-leisure activities (home/job/school)

Physical health

Social health

Cognitive health

Economic health

Vitality/sleep

Environment (safety)

Leisure (rest/fun)

Spirituality/life meaning

Healthy behaviour

Intellectual pursuit

Life satisfaction

Health care

(Charlemagne-Bagal et al., 2015)

Some determinants

Material factors (housing, neighborhood)

Psychosocial factors (stressful living circs., relationships)

Behaviourial & biological factors (nutrition, physical activity, alcohol, tobacco).

(WHO, 2010)

Some general agreement

Some baseline data


Empirical and practice evidence (s)

Life expectancy

An unhealthy diet & lack of physical activity are leading global risks to health

(WHO, 2015)

Australians are living longer & there are fewer deaths per 100,000 population

(AIHW, 2014)

Mental health

About 15-21% of Australians have a mental disorder

(DoHA, 2013)

Mental wellbeing of tertiary students

Prevalence of student distress is double that of general population (Stallman, 2010).

Tertiary students have a greater prevalence of moderate distress than non-students &

financial factors increase risk of high distress (Cvetkovski, Reavley & Jorm, 2012)

One in four Australian students suffer some form of severe psychological distress

(Larcombe et al., 2014).

Prevalent mental health disorders

In a 2012 Australian university sample 8% depression, 13% anxiety, 14% eating disorders &

8% harmful drinking (Said, Kypri & Bowman, 2012). 17.3% of a sample of American

College/university students suffer depression, 7% general anxiety (Eisenberg, Hunt & Speer, 2013).

Physical activity Insufficient physical activity is a

leading risk factor for death worldwide with 1 in 4 adults not active

enough. In addition, 80% of adolescents do not exercise

sufficiently (WHO, 2015)

DietPeople are now consuming more fats, salt, free sugars & high energy foods

but don’t eat enough fruit, vegetables & dietary fibre (WHO, 2015)

Wellbeing at Macquarie


Wellbeing declines the longer a student remains at university

Wellbeing related to living


Figure 1: Differences in AUIWB and WHO- 5 scores as measured by average total scores for participants with each living arrangement, (error bars show ± 1 s.e.).

2010 MQ Wellbeing study

AUIWB = Australian Unity Index of Wellbeing (personal life satisfaction) WHO-5 = Who (Five) Wellbeing Index (1998)(affective components of wellbeing)

What is our responsibility?

9OFFICE I FACULTY I DEPARTMENT

Some applicable frameworks

Higher Education Standards Framework (Threshold Standards) 2015

Participation & attainment (orientation & progression)

Learning environment

(facilities, infrastructure, diversity & equity, wellbeing & safety)

Teaching

(learning resources & educational support)

Representation, Information & information management

(accurate, timely, relevant)

Higher Education Support Act 2003

National access to service benchmarks

- Orientation programs

- Access to health, welfare, advocacy & career services

Determine reasonable and appropriate level of support

MQ Student service design principles• Make access easy • When possible prevention• Offer services & some treatments online (CBT) • Only perform evidence based treatments • Reassure & refer (when required) • Create a sense of belonging (with MQ)

Exercise, diet & psychology

Some recent findings

Physical activity has a closer association with place based characteristics than interpersonal & societal environments, while interpersonal factors play a greater role in dietary behaviours of young people (Vet, Ridder & Wit (2010).

Most students with high life & food satisfaction live & eat at home with their parents more, & report fewer health issues, have heathy eating habits & consider food important to their wellbeing (Schnettleret al., 2015)

University students participating in moderate as distinct to low or vigorous physical activity trials reported significantly greater involvement in exercise following the study (Plotnikoff et al., 2015)

50% of university students reported significant improvement in their diet following healthy eating interventions. Daily fruit, vegetable, wholegrain intake improved & overall fat intake & calories reduced (Plotnikoff et al., 2015)

Physical activity, diet & nutrition

What intervention (s) work


Multiple strategies enable increased health, literacy & change

More short/medium term interventions (less than 12 weeks) resulted in greater outcomes than longer duration interventions.

Interventions targeting nutrition (only) resulted in more significant outcomes in comparison to physical activity, weight or multiple behaviours however review participants were mainly female (Plotnikoffet al., 2015).

Consumers eat what is available so nutrition messages, nutrient labelling, healthy food choices, portion control of unhealthy foods are useful environment interventions (Roy et al., 2015).

Smartphone apps can reach & engage students with eating disorders that we normally do not reach on a much larger scale (Tregarthen, Lock & Darcy, 2015).

More specific interventions


Awareness, participation & engagement leads to change

Physical activity Adults should do a minimum 150mins of moderate intensity physical activity per

week, or 75 minutes of vigorous intensity physical activity, or combination of

moderate/vigorous plus muscle strengthening activities on 2 days per week

(WHO, 2015)

1. Energy in (calories) = energy output2. Fat consumption < 30% of intake3. Sugars < 10% of intake4. Salt intake < 5gms per day 5. 400g of fruits, vegetables, whole grains, nuts a day

Diet needs change to suit person’s interaction with environ.

MQ Uniwellbeing results


N=150 (ongoing RCT)

Anxiety (GAD7)

Stages of Treatment Mean

Before Treatment 9.63

Final Treatment 5.29

Post Treatment (3 months) 5.16

Depression (PHQ9)

Stages of Treatment Mean

Before Treatment 10.38

Final Treatment 6.51

Post Treatment (3 months) 5.99

Planning


Lets now begin

Please see the two templates I will provide and choose which

one you wish to focus on today.

One is for a personal plan while the other an institution plan.

You do not need to share it with anyone.

I would like to show you how to complete some of the various

boxes in these templates.

A planned approach to wellness

16OFFICE I FACULTY I DEPARTMENT

Personal development plan

A planned approach to wellness


Institution development plan