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The Calm Room team received a grant from Heroes for Health of $5,000.

As well as being a relaxing space for students, the Calm Room is also a gateway into implementing similar rooms across campus by using some of the grant money. There are plans to open two more rooms, one in the Student’s Union Building and another in the Central Academic Building.

Shaniff Esmail, associate chair with the department of occupational therapy, said Tuesday 150 people have come through the Calm Room since its soft opening two weeks ago.

Esmail has been a professor at the University of Alberta for almost 30 years and it was his encounter with a student that led him to the idea of the Calm Room.

“I saw a student who was having some anxiety and she left the class and she was in sort of a corner upstairs just kind of needing to escape and there’s no place to go, and I thought we need a calm room,” said Esmail.

Esmail said they did not want to create a space for students to just escape, but also where students could do something productive that does not involve school work. He adds that by giving students a space where they can take ownership of their mental health they can cope in a healthy matter.

Esmail said that academic accommodations were mainly made for students with physical disabilities but in recent years there has been a shift, and most students today have accommodations due to mental health issues such as anxiety.

“We’re finding that in today’s world it’s an epidemic,” said Esmail, adding, “we’re having students who are not able to cope, who are having difficulties dealing with the day-to-day stress of being in school and it’s just getting worse.”