Holland College in Charlottetown is involved in a pilot project aimed at addressing an increase in requests for on-campus mental-health services.

The project's lead, Dr. Stan Kutcher, teaches psychiatry at Nova Scotia's Dalhousie University. He says the demand for mental-health services on campuses nationwide has increased between 10 and 15 per cent over the last several years.

"We need to try to figure out why this is happening and what can be done to improve the state of affairs," Kutcher told CBC Radio's Mainstreet P.E.I. on Friday.

He said the number of mental-health issues hasn't increased.

"So, what we are seeing is an increase in perceived need for services, but not an increase in actual prevalence of disorders," Kutcher said.

"We have to try to better understand why this increased interest and why the increased demand," Kutcher said. "How can we effectively deal with concerns that students may have, but at the same time make sure that those students who actually have mental disorders get the proper care and treatment that they need?"

The Pathway Through Mental Health Care for Postsecondary Settings project is a three-year, three-part program. The first step, which begins this year, centres on enhancing mental-health literacy.

In recent years, Kutcher said, there's been an increase in the awareness of mental-health issues and the need to eliminate the stigma surrounding them.

"Those are all very good things," he said. "However, along with increased awareness, there hasn't been an increased understanding and literacy related to mental health and mental illness."

For example, some young people are confusing their negative feelings with depression, he said.

"The first step is to enhance mental-health literacy in students and faculty so that people really understand the difference between having a bad-hair week and having a mental disorder, because the interventions are very, very different," he said.

Next year, Kutcher said, the project will focus on training faculty to identify students with mental-health issues, as well as to support and refer those students to the right kind of care.

The final year will provide skill upgrading to on- and off-campus health-care providers who provide mental-health services to young people with mental disorders, he said.

This is meant "to ensure that [health-care providers] have the tools and the knowledge base that has evolved over the last three to four years, and that they can then apply it effectively in their own settings."