Mental Health – Education Part 2: Students

Student. It seems a simple word but goodness it can get complicated quickly.

Students in Wales alone make up over 700,000 people; which is almost a third of our population. This encompasses students who are at schools, colleges and universities, but also those of us who many forget to include as students such as adult learners or work based learning.

My point, as I’m sure you can see, is that the student body of just Wales alone is huge and when we expand this to the UK the number shoots into the millions. Yet despite these huge numbers, very little is said about their mental health.

Being a student can be insanely stressful, whether you are in school and having to learn for hours upon hours every day or whether you are at university and pulling your hair out over whether you’ve used the right referencing system, or maybe you’re trying to learn something new for pleasure or for your job and are just trying to balance that with your other commitments.

The fact is that student life, in whatever form it takes, can be extremely difficult to cope with. So the first thing you should always be doing is making sure that you are putting yourself first. It doesn’t matter if you are at school or college, university or anywhere else as a student, you need time to yourself to just be yourself, to be able to switch off from it all.

Now obviously this should never be used as an excuse to get out of doing the work needed, but it is something which we all need. School children especially need time to decompress, its hard being at school, it’s not just the pressures of the classroom but also social pressure, parental pressure, expectations to meet of the school and your teachers.

We put a lot on school children but don’t provide them with enough tools to handle all of this. ‘75% of mental illnesses start before a child reaches their 18th birthday.’ This is huge when we consider that we are pretty much in education in some form until we are 18. So why are we not tackling this problem?

Well it can be a difficult subject to know how to approach, everyone is different and there isn’t one solution that works for everyone. However, a starting point is, like I said in my first column, to begin talking about it; to speak out and begin that conversation, especially as ’51% of young people feel embarrassed about mental illness’ when they should in this day and age be able to communicate about it without feeling embarrassed or ashamed.

Students at any level of education need to have the opportunity to talk to someone who can, at the very least, be a listening ear and be able to direct them to a service that can help.

Sadly only about a third of teachers will have been offered training in supporting with mental health, there are also too few schools or colleges with access to a fully trained mental health professional. This is an issue which will only become worse the longer it is left unaddressed.

To any students of any age who may come across this humble column, who may be feeling stressed, under-represented, confused, unheard or invisible. I see you; I hear you; I value you. You are all so important to the continued development of our world, our knowledge, our art and music.

I personally believe that students are the very heart of our world, learning and creating and innovating with all the eagerness and wide-eyed fascination of a new born child. We undervalue and ignore what we find hard to deal with, it gets swept under the rug and we hope it will go away and resolve itself.

It won’t be swept away. We won’t be swept away.

You shouldn’t have to, but fight to be heard, demand that you be seen and find the help you need. Whenever times get hard, remember as Winne the Pooh says: You are braver than you believe, smarter than you seem, and stronger than you think. Take care of each other and of yourselves wherever you may be learning.

Resources

Samaritans – 116 123.

Student Minds – https://www.studentminds.org.uk

Mind – https://www.mind.org.uk

Rehab 4 Addiction – https://www.rehab4addiction.co.uk