Online Reporter
Lovemore Kadzura
Post Reporter
INSTITUTIONS of higher learning must broaden their response to student mental health beyond drug and substance abuse, Manicaland State University of Applied Sciences (MSUAS) Vice Chancellor, Professor Albert Chahwanda has said.
He said universities should not treat mental health as a reactive exercise, as students are grappling with depression, chronic anxiety, digital fatigue, suicide ideation, and academic and economic uncertainty.
Professor Chahwanda was speaking at the Higher and Tertiary Education Institutions Counsellors Symposium held at MSUAS.
“The socio-economic landscape facing our youths has demonstrated unequivocally that our campus boundaries are sometimes porous. The psychological strain felt within our lecture halls is inseparable from the realities of the surrounding communities. For far too long, tertiary institutions have treated mental health as a reactive, office-bound exercise, waiting for students to reach crisis before opening the clinic door,” he said, further cautioning against allowing the urgency of drug abuse to overshadow other conditions.
“While we rightly direct focus towards the urgent scourge of drug and substance abuse, I place a specific challenge that we must not allow the gravity of substance abuse to overshadow the broader spectrum of mental health conditions affecting our students and communities. The quiet struggles are just as devastating. We cannot lose sight of severe depression, chronic anxiety, digital fatigue, relational trauma, suicide ideation, and the acute psychological toll of academic and economic uncertainty. When we narrow our gaze exclusively to addiction, we risk leaving the silent, non-substance related wounds untreated until it is too late,” said Professor Chahwanda.
Professor Chahwanda said community-centred strategies must be comprehensive, diagnosing and supporting the whole person.
As an applied sciences institution, he said, MSUAS believes scholarship achieves its true purpose only when translated into practical solutions.
Female Students Network advocacy and programmes manager, Ms Mitchel Biriwasha, said female students face distinct pressures that heighten their vulnerability.
“We have realised that female students face a lot of challenges as they manoeuvre their day-to-day living at college which then impact on their mental health. The most problematic challenge is around sexual and gender-based violence,” she said, adding that many experience abuse linked to online violence, which affects them mentally and disrupts their learning.
Ms Biriwasha said many female students lack strong financial backing and struggle to sustain themselves on campus, making financial limitations a major driver of distress.
“Some parents just send students to colleges without thinking ahead on how they would survive. These financial pressures lead them to compromise decisions they make to sustain themselves. Some end up indulging in semester marriages where they get involved with fellow students or older men. This increases their burdens and impacts on mental health,” she said.
