Your student years: the best years of your life. A time of experimentation and questionable hairstyles and camaraderie watching daytime television. Yet for some students—a minority, but a significant one—this is an aspiration rather than a reality.
This month, the Institute for Public Policy Research (IPPR) published "Not by Degrees: Improving Student Mental Health in the UK's Universities’, which paints an altogether grimmer picture for some of our students.
According to the IPPR in 2015/16, 15,395 first year students (2 per cent) disclosed to their university that they experienced a mental health difficulty—almost five times the number in 2006/07. In 2014/15, 1180 students who experienced mental health difficulty dropped-out of university, an increase of 210 per cent compared to 2009/10. Just under half of students who report experiencing a mental health condition choose not to disclose it to their university, so the number of students potentially struggling is far higher.
That some students are suffering in silence is no surprise. In the popular imagination, university is still a place of free and easy self-discovery, somewhere between Hogwarts without the magic and a Club 18-30 holiday with a poncey reading list.
A challenging experience
But university is also for many a totally new experience: a shift of town, a shift of routine, a casting off of old friendships and the hopeful establishment of new ones. Short of joining the navy, going to prison or working on an oil rig, it is hard to picture a life change which expects and enforces such a total change of life circumstances. These changes come at a time where it is also known that many experience their first periods of mental illness, making university a perfect storm of challenges to mental wellbeing.In many ways, the cultural and political discourse of our country is defined by those who were successful at university. In the past, a “what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger” rhetoric has clouded discussion about student mental health, reminiscent of misty-eyed men in gentlemen’s clubs lamenting the passing of the cane in schools. Today, right wingers label universities as liberal breeding grounds for “special snowflakes” demanding equally special treatment.
The numbers in context
The claim from the IPPR report that attracted most notice and column inches was that student suicides rose from 75 in 2007 to 134 in 2015. It’s worth considering this number in context. The Samaritans prefer deaths per 100,000 as a better way of expressing prevalence; using the IPPR figures, this figures at roughly 12.7 deaths by suicide per 100,000 students. The IPPR report states that two-thirds of students to enrol in higher education in the UK are under 25 years old, rising to 89 per cent for undergraduates.According to the Samaritans, the rate of deaths per suicide for young people in 2015 was 5.8 per 100,000 for those aged 15-19, and 9.5 per 100,000 for young adults aged 20-15. Assuming that each of the tragic deaths reported by the IPPR occurred among people in this same age range, we can suppose that the rate of suicide among young people in higher education is slightly higher than in those not attending university—a worrying state of affairs.
"I went to bed one day and then couldn't get up"It is important to remember that while mental health difficulty may not affect all students, for those it does affect the results are profound. I failed to get a degree because of my own mental health difficulties. I began university the year that tuition fees were introduced for the first time in UK universities. I was poor, working class and had come to university aged 21 after working. I couldn’t just give up and return to my parents. I went to bed one day and then couldn't get up. I fell in the Thames at low tide. Everything became like a dream; the world perpetually twilight.
Rather than being an adventure into learning and self-realisation, each day was a round of hustling to survive while trying desperately to focus upon the ever-advancing timetable of missed deadlines and shirked seminars. I was unable to work, ran out of money, ran up debts on fees and accommodation. Unwashed and hungry, I managed two essays over two years and for the most part relied on the support of friends to see me through.
A change in approach?
In those days, there were no formal structures to deal with mental health difficulties. I only received a diagnosis a couple of years after attempting a first year of a degree twice. There was suicide in our circle and endemic mental health difficulty. We were kind to each other, but we did not have the resources or knowledge to pull ourselves up from our crises on our own.That universities are institutions with common values supported by public funds should make it easier for us to create support and protection for the mental health of those attending them that is practical, not rhetorical. The issue is not accepting those with mental health difficulties via a welcoming mission statement but taking action, and providing resources to support them to thrive.
While organisations such as Students Minds have done much to awareness, much campus activity has focused on how students can help each other. The report from IPPR is part of a wider piece of work with Universities UK and Public Health England to get universities to see mental health as a priority and explore commissioning specific mental health services for students and staff. Whether these increased needs will translate into financial and practical support for students will depend on which direction the political and economic wind is blowing.
University is an exceptional life experience for those lucky enough to attend. It did not cross my mind as a student that my university as an institution had a responsibility to support me and to help me to achieve what I might achieve. That young people now expect better doesn’t make them “special snowflakes”—it’s a testament to how far attitudes toward mental health difficulty have shifted. While the facts are clear, it will take political will and institutional bravery to make universities places where mental health difficulty is no barrier to achievement.
