President Brown: YukonU is partnering with Headversity to improve personal resilience

Dear students,

YukonU is a caring community, and our collective mental health and wellbeing has been a topic of many conversations since I joined you two months ago.

I am excited to share with you that Yukon University is joining forces with Headversity to pilot their interactive, mobile app-based resilience skills building program with our students, faculty and staff this academic year.

Install the app on your mobile device, input your preferred email address and use the YukonU student code YKUSTU to register and begin your resilience journey. Our Connect Team is available to assist if you need help installing the app.

Two minutes after answering some questions, you will have your personal resilience score and suggested training to focus on.

Resilience is defined in terms of our capacity to face adversity. Using Headversity increases our self-awareness of the six skills of resilience: mental health, self-expertise, mindfulness, mental fitness, hardiness and energy management.

Headversity is a Canadian start-up led by clinical psychiatrist Dr. Ryan Todd. Check out this web series for more details of their launch journey.

Headversity is just one way in which we can learn new skills to manage our wellbeing and improve our resilience. As soon as the Mental Health and Wellness Committee brought this forward, I saw it as an important tool for each of us to have in our personal wellbeing toolbox.

Four things I love about Headversity’s approach:

1. A completely private, anonymous and individual resilience journey.

2. Resilience training is proven to protect and restore mental health and fuel stronger performance.

3. The app meets users where they are at, providing personalized, evidence-based training suggestions that can be completed in minutes.

4. The Get Help Now button links directly to YukonU, Yukon and Canadian mental health supports.

I have used it for the past two weeks and already my engagement and curiosity around my own mental health and resilience has expanded considerably. I am now completing a daily checklist of items to help manage my well-being.

I appreciate folks may have concerns about sharing personal information with YukonU and Headversity.

Through the due diligence of the MHW Committee and our experience thus far using the app, we are assured that no personal health, medical or financial data is collected, and that all data that is collected by Headversity is stored within Canada and not sold to third parties.

In addition, the reporting back to YukonU is high level. On the right is an example of a Headversity report. It reflects where we score as an institution and the most popular lessons and tools. Reports will be shared with our community and used to guide further wellbeing initiatives.

I encourage you to engage with the Headversity. Please share feedback on your experience with the app with connect@yukonu.ca.

Take care,

Lesley

Dr. Lesley Brown
President and Vice Chancellor
Yukon University