As July marks Minority Mental Health Awareness Month, Queen’s students identifying as Queer, Trans, Black, Indigenous, or People of Colour (QTBIPOC) are getting enhanced mental health supports thanks to a fellowship program funded by Bell Let’s Talk.
Last January, Queen’s received a $100,000 grant through the Bell Let’s Talk Post-Secondary Fund to back new fellowships for recently trained QTBIPOC-identifying counsellors at Queen’s Student Wellness Services (SWS).
As SWS Clinical Manager Amber McCart said at the time: “The addition of a QTBIPOC Counselling Fellow within our team is pivotal to building a therapeutic space where students don’t just receive quality mental health care, but find their voices and experiences reflected and respected.”
Aelea Syed has been that fellow for almost a year and has provided well over 400 counselling sessions in that time.
Syed herself has many intersecting identities – from professional counsellor to Muslim to woman to immigrant – and says she often draws on that background when supporting students who are looking for a therapist with lived experience navigating complex cultural, social, or personal identities.
“I try to draw from my experience in ways that help students feel heard and understood,” says Syed. “My lived experiences help me understand, for example, the ties that hold families together in collectivist cultures and the dilemmas that students sometimes face when they are in conflict over personal versus family and cultural values.”
As one student noted on a post-session feedback form: “It felt good to know that I did not have to explain my cultural context. I could just trust that she understands.”
Syed has worked with students on issues as wide-ranging as processing and building resilience after loss or traumatic events, to managing anxiety and low mood, to dealing with minority stress on campus, to strengthening one’s mental health and self-concept.
“One of the goals of this fellowship is to help members of the QTBIPOC community grow some roots here – to build our community’s diversity and capacity to respond to diverse populations,” says McCart. “We hope this is happening in this instance and that Aelea will continue to be part of our team for many years.”
