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Mind Matters: The mental health taboo at universities

by Uncategorized

This article was originally featured in The Guardian. You can read the full article here. 

“I was depressed and paranoid”, “I was anxious and out of control”, “I had severe depression, I couldn’t get out of bed and had difficulty speaking to large groups of people”.

These are the experiences of a group of students struggling with their mental health while at university, and they’re not alone. A National Union of Students (NUS) study conducted in May 2013 shows that one in five students consider themselves to have a mental health problem.

 

So why aren’t we talking about this more?

“Students face a particular set of challenges that can leave some struggling to cope,” says Colum McGuire, NUS welfare vice president. Students are under tremendous pressure to succeed academically, to maintain a healthy social life, and many that don’t fit into the traditional 18 year old just-left-home model also face difficulty juggling their university life with other commitments.

The lack of dialogue leaves many sufferers feeling isolated. Rebecca Latz, a first year student at the University of Huddersfield suffered with anxiety when she first started university. She describes feeling “abnormal” in comparison to her peers: “My friends were all really chilled out. I was the only really obviously anxious one.”

Habiba Khanom, a third-year student at City University London, suffered from an eating disorder, depression and social anxiety. She says: “I felt like I had no one to talk to. I found it hard to make friends because I felt like if I told someone, they wouldn’t want to be friends with me.”

When mental health is discussed, it is often met with a patronising response, albeit with good intentions.

Students are sometimes told “there’s nothing to panic about”, people often don’t know what to say, and one anonymous student felt as though the people she spoke to were “missing the point entirely”.

This misunderstanding of mental health problems can lead to its sufferers feeling increasingly burdensome and some may retreat into further isolation.

One anonymous student says: “When people begin to feel a burden and shut off it becomes a real problem.”

There needs to be a shift in the way that we view and speak about mental health. The stigma attached to mental health problems is damaging to those that need to voice their experiences. The fear of being misunderstood, of being embarrassed or of being patronised, smothers those that are in search of care or a listening ear.

At universities there are counselling services in place to help those who are struggling with mental health problems, but are they doing enough? One anonymous student says it took him six weeks to get an appointment with his university’s counselling service, and another says the lack of emotional support she received from her university left her feeling “afraid of asking anyone for help entirely”.

Chris Leaman, policy manager at Young Minds, says: “Students feel that universities only care about the results and they’re not investing in their welfare. Some universities have not had a clear policy and route to help students out with mental health”

Alan Percy, a representative of the British Association for Counselling and Psychotherapy and head of the counselling service at the University of Oxford, fears that newer universities may “slash all support services” to offer “bargain price” degrees at lower fees.

Campaigns to change the stigma around mental health are spreading across UK universities. Time for Change aims to encourage people to speak openly about mental health.

Yet students can still fall through the net, and Nightline, a helpline which provides emotional support to students, is only present in 90 UK universities and colleges.

In the NUS study into mental health, only one in ten of students surveyed went to the university authorities for help. We may be moving forward in talking about mental health, but we still have a way to go.

Mental health fluctuations affect us all, some more than others. We need to ensure that the correct systems are in place for everyone. The way to do that is to speak openly about mental health and remove the stigma which silences sufferers of mental health problems.

Students need to be reassured that they will get complete support from the university if they are having trouble with their mental health; and should be aware that these systems of support exist and that they should never be ashamed to use them.

We need to create safe environments where those struggling with mental health can talk about their experiences, both with other students and in counseling spaces. We all have a responsibility to be open and continue this conversation about mental health. Because no one should go through this alone.

If you have been affected by any of the issues mentioned in this piece, contact Samaritans or Nightline.

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Rape culture at university needs urgent action

by Uncategorized

This article was originally featured in The Guardian. You can read the original article here. 

I came home after my first term at Cambridge to many shocking stories about friends’ experiences at university. Almost all described how they had been sexually violated: some had had their drinks spiked, others had been taken advantage of while drunk, and one had been raped. Rape culture in our universities urgently needs to be addressed.

One friend described her experience of being sexually assaulted in the toilets of a club. It was the second night of freshers week and she was out with her friends. She kissed a guy, but after a while tried to walk away. He followed her and pulled her to the toilets. He began to undo his trousers. She said no, but he was persistent.

 

She was too drunk to move him physically out of the way or to call for help. Luckily her phone rang – a concerned friend was searching for her. She managed to leave the cubicle, but the experience was a sombre introduction to university life.

One terrified girl spoke of being raped by another student. There was not a shred of ambiguity in the situation. She said no, he insisted, and in the end he forcefully took her virginity. She has been scared to be intimate with anyone since.

I spoke to a close friend who recalled the multiple times that her drink had been spiked. She described her worst night: blacking out after 9pm, and waking up the next day with no idea of what happened. Another friend remembers being taken home by a stranger after asking him for directions, and recalls nothing beyond him coming into her flat. She is almost certain she was raped.

There is a persistence of rape culture in university social life, and little is being done to tackle it. Questions about sexual consent are rarely addressed by our institutions of higher education, and a “laddish” approach to women’s sexual rights is pervasive. While some universities warn women to protect themselves, few attempt to educate men about a woman’s right consciously to consent to sexual acts.

At Cambridge, “swaps” between men and women of different colleges are a well-known social event. These dinners create an atmosphere in which women are heavily encouraged to drink to the point at which they become sexually vulnerable to the men.

One male friend admitted that swaps are “a bit rapey” and resolved not to go back. Other boys, meanwhile, talk of “success rates” at swaps – that is to say how many managed to have sex with girls afterwards. One boy said: “I only came on this swap because I heard there was a 70% success rate last year.”

Swaps are usually accompanied by sexist themes in order to pressure the girls into dressing provocatively. In my first week at university, I was invited to a swap which was themed “what were you wearing when the police invaded the brothel?”

This is part of a rape culture which leads boys to see women primarily as objects for their sexual satisfaction. It’s part of a wider culture that teaches girls to be sexual in accordance to men’s desires, but shames them if they explore their own sexuality.

Most of all, it’s a culture that belittles a woman’s right to say no. Joking about rape is a core part of the laddish environment that I have witnessed at university. At one student party, a boy was asked about “rapiest” thing he had done. He said that he had made sure a girl was heavily drunk before attempting to kiss her, to which another boy replied “that’s a pretty standard pulling technique for most guys.”

It’s worrying that some boys who are studying to become doctors, lawyers, scientists and teachers think that it’s acceptable to take advantage of a girl regardless of her consent. It’s disturbing that they find it amusing to encourage girls to drink to the point when they can no longer refuse to have sex with them.

Our universities cannot go on like this. Girls enter university and find themselves in a world of sexual assault, objectification and harassment. We’re shown that even if you say no, he can still have sex with you. That it’s your fault if you were too drunk, and that your clothes ask for the attention. We’re being told to shut up and cover up.

A recent NUS study shows that women students are at increased risk of sexual harassment and violence. Such a toxic environment is hindering the emotional development of young men and women. Yet there is no policy in place to help eradicate this aspect of university life.

Universities must create a strategy for tackling this issue, beginning with the introduction of compulsory consent workshops for all students, if we are to have any hope of eradicating the insidious rape culture that is currently going unchallenged.