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This paper describes the development and psychometric testing of the Substance Use Wellness Tool, created to help raise awareness about alcohol and other substance misuse among university undergraduates. The tool is a self- and peer-reflection guide that students can use to monitor and alter their patterns of substance use. Exploratory and confirmatory factor analysis showed that the tool was unidimensional and that all 13 assessed domains were important. Cronbach’s alpha indicated the tool was highly reliable. Construct (convergent) validity for alcohol use with the 10-item AUDIT was also good, with strong correlations overall and within subgroups defined by gender, year of study, and university site.

Although many individual risk factors have been identified for student mental health problems and alcohol misuse, there is a relative paucity of research that examines how variables, such as campus environment, contribute to students’ experiences of these problems. This study examined a series of perceived campus environment factors (e.g., feeling valued, feeling they fit in, believing faculty care about them, perceived administrative concern for mental health and substance abuse) and the relationships among these perceived campus environment variables and students’ mental well-being, risk of harmful drinking, and their willingness to seek help for a substance use or mental health concern. A total of 1,885 first-year undergraduate university students including 938 females, 936 males and 11 “non-binary” participants, from three geographically diverse Canadian university sites, completed online surveys. The results demonstrated significant associations among the perceived campus environment variables and both mental health and alcohol misuse outcomes. It was also observed that whether a student lived in residence or off campus significantly affected which campus environment factors were most associated with their reported mental health and alcohol misuse. Additionally, willingness to help-seek was related with students’ perceptions of campus culture. These patterns globally demonstrated the importance of campus culture for student mental health and alcohol use. Strengths and limitations of the study, as well as directions for future research on the relations of campus culture to mental health, substance use, and help-seeking are discussed.

The Caring Campus project was a three-year intervention research project funded by Movember Canada that fostered new awareness regarding the interconnection between gender, mental health, and substance (specifically alcohol) misuse on three university campuses in Canada, and encouraged new approaches to promote young men’s health. In this project, we demonstrated that male students are willing to assume leadership roles to promote mental health and healthier alcohol use to their peers and enact a social agenda for change. Empowerment strategies encouraged male students to enlist like-minded peers to advance men’s mental health and transform campus drinking cultures, including countering gender-based ideals and norms associated with mental health problems and substance misuse. There is now great potential to influence the way in which other post-secondary institutions approach mental wellness and substance misuse using the Caring Campus model, which uses student empowerment to catalyze change.