University of Windsor offers rare recovery program for students battling addiction
Lancers Recover Program will be the second of its kind in Canada
Starting this fall, University of Windsor students looking for support dealing with alcohol and substance abuse will be able to receive help at a student-led peer recovery group.
Dubbed the "Lancers Recover Program," the initiative was the brainchild of Onawa LaBelle, an assistant professor of psychology at the University of Windsor who has been sober for the past 15 years.
Though the program formally launches later this year, LaBelle explained that student and administration response to the program has been "overwhelmingly positive."
"Last semester, when I was … putting feelers out and trying to gauge interest, I found about a dozen students on campus who already identified as being in recovery and were very interested," she said. "And then I've come across staff and faculty also in recovery maybe not interested in the same sense … but [are] definitely supportive."
LaBelle was partly inspired to file an application for one of the university's Student Mental Health Strategy grants thanks to her own recovery journey while in school.
When LaBelle first enrolled in university in the U.S. — roughly one year after she committed to staying sober — she attended an institution without a recovery program.
She later enrolled at the University of Michigan, which does provide recovery services, describing the differences between her two experiences as "profound."
"My ability to form connections and to feel like I was a part of the campus community was a lot different at the University of Michigan, as opposed to other schools that I attended," LaBelle said. "And I really wanted to try my best to recreate that experience for students here at the University of Windsor."
Once the Lancers Recover Program launches, it'll be only one of two such services offered by Canadian universities.
Whereas there are almost 140 recovery programs offered at U.S. post-secondary institutions, LaBelle said the University of British Columbia is the only other Canadian school that carries such a program.
Watch Prof. Onawa LaBelle talk about the Lancers Recover Program:
"So it's benefiting the students, but it's also benefiting the university and it helps reduce stigma associated with people — generally [people living with] substance-use disorder or people in addiction recovery," she said.
Though the university currently offers students with a number of different mental heatlh and wellness services, the school's mental health and wellness coordinate said the Lancers Recover Program will "help meet a need."
"Over the past number of years, we did have programming that was specific, and then it's changed to focus specifically on mental health as a whole and working in substance and recovery," said Ashley Vodarek.
She added that the new program "is something that's … reworked to look at what is the need, what are we going to focus on and how would that be done from a mental health lens overall?"
"This is all under one umbrella," Vodarek said. "And the comorbidity of mental health and substance use is something that we're trying to bring in together."
With files from Amy Dodge