Beautiful Minds Conference

Seminar: Counselling Services in the University

Seminar leaders spoke to the theme from the perspective of service providers (Colin Lago) and service users (Rachel Tooth).

Service Providers

Counselling Services are aware of the need for students to be more psychologically robust than in the past. They face constant changes over the three or four year period at University. Placements, reference groups, friendships and accommodation can all change several times, and the course itself may be a place more of transition than stability with the advance of modularisation. Personal contact can be the most important thing to students in difficulty, the sense that someone knows and understands what is happening to them. This is traditionally provided through the personal tutoring system and in a specialist way through counselling services, but it is increasingly important that the University itself is experienced as a humanly connected community.  Help needs to be both acceptable and accessible. This is a priority for Counselling Services who must work against the stigmatisation and stereotyping of mental health issues that prevent people coming forward when they need to.

Service Users

Students need to have choices in what they want to ‘catch’ them if they ‘fall’. The importance of normalising the process of seeking help, particularly in the area of mental health, is vital. Students may experience many barriers to accessing services, from feelings of social embarrassment to feelings of greed at being seen to ask for too much. Anxieties exist about confidentiality – what might go on academic or medical records for future employers, or placement organisations, to read? Referrals from one area to another work best when staff are familiar with the services they are referring to, and can quickly and simply give students the necessary information, normalising the process of seeking help. Simply knowing that a service is available can act as a safety net, before it is even used. Students can be easily put off asking for help by a poor response at an initial stage, and the variability of core structures such as personal tutoring systems can be a significant factor in this.

Additional discussion points

• Friends and flatmates of students with mental health issues may also need support. Many are very willing to help, but do not know how best to do this, or where to draw the line, causing their own lives to suffer.
• Interactive on-line support may be a way of offering something to students who are unlikely to use a face-to-face service. The Samaritan’s initiative in this area will provide useful learning.
• Staff can also need support, both in their work with students and in their own right, as working in the HE sector becomes increasingly demanding.
• Counsellors themselves can become isolated, either within the institution if links are weak, or simply by being part of a very small team, or lone counsellors.

Modularisation means that the course itself may provide less stability and identity than it did previously, and there will be frequent changes in accommodation, friendship networks