Simple messages encouraging students to “health yourself” at Otago

A new campaign at the University of Otago is aiming to improve the overall wellbeing of the student population. The basic principles of the campaign were developed in collaboration with the Otago University Students’ Association (OUSA), and the University’s onsite primary health care clinic, Student Health.

The Health Yourself campaign is a coordinated approach to improve student and staff health and wellbeing through increasing awareness and understanding of what a healthy lifestyle looks like.

Acting Director of Student Health, Margaret Perley, says while the messages are essentially common sense, in recent years Student Health has noticed an increasing number of physical and mental health presentations relating to a lack of basic healthy lifestyle practices.

“University is an opportunity to have fun, experience life and to achieve academic goals, however many students we see struggle to maintain a healthy lifestyle, and don’t have strategies or experience to cope with normal levels of stress and anxiety.

“We often hear people linking those feelings of stress and anxiety to concerns they’re developing a mental illness; over pathologising is unhelpful in developing strategies to manage wellbeing,” Ms Perley adds.

She hopes that by raising awareness students will recognise opportunities to improve how they look after themselves and their friends and enable them to better understand if they need to seek professional advice.

Vice-Chancellor, Professor Harlene Hayne says both staff and students can easily benefit from the messages Health Yourself puts forward.

“It can be easy for life to become unbalanced, especially for young adults living on their own for the first time. Once winter sets in, assignments start backing up and exams appear on the horizon, the need for a bit of balance is plain to see but easily overlooked.
“The simple suggestions in the campaign can help prevent stress turning from a molehill to a mountain,” Professor Hayne says.

Focus groups were held with students in some residential colleges and flats to identify their preferences, with clarity of message, a light-hearted tone and an obvious relatability to Dunedin students being some of the insights that helped steer the campaign. The campaign has been supported throughout its planning phase by the Otago University Students’ Association (OUSA).

“OUSA is happy that we can work together with the Uni over the critical issue of Mental Health and student wellbeing. We will be supporting the campaign through linked content as well as through OUSA marketing channels,” OUSA President James Heath says.

The campaign, launched today, will utilise visual messaging in the form of posters around the University campus, plus similar electronic versions will also be noticeable online and in some lecture theatres.