Mental Health Awareness Month: where we are and where we’re going
Tuesday 30-05-2023 - 10:09
Introduction
This month has been home to Mental Health Awareness Month. Mental Health has been a priority topic within the student population for years, and is also one of the key areas of work for any given Welfare and Liberation Officer. As we approach the end of May, I thought it would be worthwhile to share my reflections on how the conversation around Mental Health has progressed, as well as on the work I’ve seen during my time as an Officer.
Reflections
It is equal parts intriguing and positive to see how the conversation around mental health has developed over the years among younger generations. As a teenager, I slowly but surely saw the topic of mental health be brought to the forefront of conversations due to the influence of young activists. Emphasising the importance of raising awareness, breaking down stigma, and even beginning to lobby for increased funding in this space, were all themes that I repeatedly saw and engaged in before attending University.
Shortly before I arrived at Durham, I began to see the same conversations extend beyond the activist space and into everyday conversation. More and more young people felt willing to talk to each other about how they were feeling, and social media became the key mechanism for information dissemination when curriculums and course structures didn’t do enough. As a consequence, young people’s understanding of mental health, or at least the importance of it, was becoming something distinctly different to that of earlier generations.
Mental health at universities, including Durham, has become a mainstay of the student experience. Especially given the events of 2020 onwards, how this coexisted alongside Durham’s reputation and offer, and the consequences this has had since, we absolutely cannot afford to go backwards in this space.
The issues that students have experienced, in conjunction with their more acute understanding of mental health, has ultimately landed Universities in a place where the statements like ‘mental health is important’ and ‘it’s important to look after yourself’ are now viewed as surface-level and do not meet the expectations of our students.
Instead, there needs to be a shift that moves the University beyond acknowledgement and towards action. More importantly, action that can be directly translated into the student experience, resulting in meaningful impact. During my time as an Officer, my role has allowed me to see more directly the work that the University is doing on mental health provision, which I will begin to outline below.
Recent work
One of the first pieces of work I was introduced to was the Student Support Review. In the years before I started this role, the University conducted a review into its mental health and student support offer. This included a Student Advisory Group, a group made up of students from Colleges and Associations who directly fed into the recommendations of this review. These recommendations were decided upon right before I started, and the University has spent this year preparing to implement them. This will include dedicated student support staff in departments, and having a digital system in place that only requires a student to disclose something once (and not have to repeat it to each support staff they encounter along the way).
Measures of this sort would, if well implemented, provide extra support for students who may not want to reach out to their college, and reduce the amount of times a student would have to repeat potentially traumatic information.
Another area of work that I’ve recently started collaborating with the University on is the Mental Health Charter Award. This Charter includes a framework created by students, which provides a set of evidence-informed principles to support universities to adopt a whole-university approach to mental health and wellbeing. When a University applies for the Award, the Charter will assess how well the university is currently working towards the award’s principles and whether its progress to date, honest awareness, and future plans merit a Charter Award. There will also be recommendations for further improvement that the Charter identifies from the submission.
Moreover, the Charter covers 18 areas of university life, ranging from learning, teaching, and assessment, to support services, and even student voice and participation.
I’ve started working with the University on formulating the student voice and participation section of this submission, and will also be submitting a student-led report on mental health at Durham which will be sent along with the University’s main submission. I am going to use this opportunity to be as honest as possible about what works at Durham, what doesn’t work, and what improvements need to be made
Final thoughts
Saying that the University’s work outlined above are positive steps in the right direction would be an accurate statement. Putting resources into more support staff and improved systems are needed measures, and applying for an award that was created by students and provides feedback on areas of improvement is just one way to check where the University is at with its mental health offer.
At the same time, I cannot deny the fact that, over the past three years especially, students have been facing some of the biggest challenges to their mental health. This sentiment should not be understated. Given how students have had no choice but to endure a global pandemic, rampant anti-Black racism and Sinophobia, misogyny and transphobia, and Housing and Cost-of-Living Crises, there has been no sense of reprieve from this constant onslaught of struggle after struggle after struggle. No wonder that mental health is at the top of so many students’ agendas – looking back at everything these years have had to offer, it would be impossible for it not to be.
One sometimes frustrating aspect of being an Officer is that I am only in the role for one year.
However, I have always been a believer of the passion and power that exists within Durham students to do better and be better, I am hopeful that future Officers and student leaders across the board will continue this commitment towards striving for better support for our students.
