The Impact of Weather on a Canadian Post-Secondary Walk-In Counseling Program

ABSTRACT

The demand for counseling services in Canadian post-secondary settings has grown dramatically over the past decade putting increased demands on limited resources as colleges and universities were never intended to be part of the mental health treatment continuum of care. One response at many institutions has been to introduce walk-in counseling programs to avoid lengthy waiting lists and to deal with issues more readily. However, this too has implications for staffing for there are times when there are not enough staff to handle student needs while at other times counselors spend hours with no client contact. Weather is one factor that many believe impacts clinic attendance and while there is a mixed literature supporting the influence of this variable it pertains nearly exclusively to medical settings. This study, examining walk-in counseling attendance through an entire academic year of one university in southwestern Ontario, found that daylight, precipitation, and temperature were not statistically related to the number of students who sought counseling.

KEYWORDS:

• Brief counseling
• Canada
• day light
• precipitation
• temperature
• university
• walk-in
• weather

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.