Do you feel you need more mental health support in school or uni?

Aoife

Hey everyone,

You may have seen our recent post about the launch of The Mix Connect.

The Mix Connect is both a mental health search engine and a Pupil Ambassador Programme, to provide wellbeing support for students. Feel free to have a read of our post to read more about it

For our launch, we wanted to start a discussion here to hear your thoughts on mental health support in schools. How are things at school or uni for you? What support do you wish was there? Or if you're no longer in school or uni at the moment, what support do you wish you had?

Comment below, we'd love to hear from you

Former Member

@Aife there needs to be like a wellbeing hub in lile school and sixth forms. Mental health doesnt really matter to most teachers because there job is only teaching

Former Member

I’ve finished both school and uni now, but I massively wish more support would have been available to me at school. I was always a nervous and shy person, and didn’t receive any help for it at school only making it worse. It wasn’t until I got to uni, when at this time my anxiety was so much worse that they actually spoke to us about well-being and gave us resources. I just wished had been available when I was at school and maybe could have prevented my anxiety getting as bad as it did. I think schools need to focus on mental health a lot more and provide a lot more resources to students. Like @AnonymousFox said it really felt at my school that teachers didn’t care which was a shame

Amy22

@Aife I'm so glad you are addressing this as I personally feel that more schools and uni including colleges should have more wellbeing hubs or spots so that more students even teachers could have somewhere to talk. I had a thing in my secondary school which was called a nurture room which was designed for students with learning needs or neurodiversity (I was one of the pupils in the room and I found it very helpful to have a room where I could go to for support if needed). In college I have got a support system in place but I personally feel like my support wasn't very good in college specifically with well-being and mental health. I had a one to one but then they got promoted to a different role and my new one to one was nice but she wasn't good with the well-being side of things. Its why I felt like I no longer used my support system in college anymore. Im not in college now as I have finished but looking back I wished that the support system was more improved. I did feel some of the staff they employed didn't have much knowledge of well-being in general and if I was worried about something they would help but they coulden't do much or they would either be in a meeting or something like that.

I think if more schools had safe zones or well-being hotspots more people would talk more about how they are feeling, this then can help a school focus on important things. More specifically, for students too as I think schools should focus on making their students feel supported and valid in the community. I felt that looking back on my secondary school they focused more on making the school look ascethtically pleasing than actually focusing on buying more books or even focusing on well-being. I think at one point my head was even considering getting rid of the nurture room as our room was constantly being moved around all the time meaning that he wanted to get rid of it which I found sad (I hope that this wasn't the case).

Former Member

@Aife may sound weird but there needs to be a talk to all school about how important mental health is

Former Member

@Aife i think ppl are not even aware abt how much mental health problems affect ppl at school. in my class many ppl are immature and just dont understand how mental health impacts young ppl.i wish there was an anonymous place wherenu could get help, bcz a couple days ago i reached out for help and ive never felt more exposed bcz they know stuff abt me. i also wish schools kept their promises, they talk abt ant bullying and stuff but imo its bullshit, they only care abt earning money

Amy22

libbystrawberry wrote: »

@Aife i think ppl are not even aware abt how much mental health problems affect ppl at school. in my class many ppl are immature and just dont understand how mental health impacts young ppl.i wish there was an anonymous place wherenu could get help, bcz a couple days ago i reached out for help and ive never felt more exposed bcz they know stuff abt me. i also wish schools kept their promises, they talk abt ant bullying and stuff but imo its bullshit, they only care abt earning money

I got to agree with you as I often find that most schools only care about their appearance and not focused on the student's overall wellbeing. I found my secondary school only cared about having good enough grades so they could boast about how good our school was when really I think our head was trying to get rid of our nurture room as we kept moving a lot and at one point I think our head would have got rid of it. I think schools need to focus more on the actual well being of students as that is more important than making the school look aesthetically pleasuring for school reports or even for vistors when in reality our school was crumbling. My secondary school now has only started to focus on wellbeing but only because of the pandemic happening. I think if the pandemic didn't happen they woulden't have focused on student well being as much as it wasn't something talked about ish.

Former Member

I pretty much agree with all of the above posts. In secondary, there was a counselling service but most students did not know that we had one nor knew where we could find them. However, I've discovered that to use the counselling service was to be referred by a teacher who thinks that your mental decline is severe. Additionally, getting an appointment with a counsellor was difficult since they already had many students requesting one and there weren't many counsellors. So, that explains why we didn't know much about these things. The only thing they told us was to use the resources (basically websites that gave advice). These resources may have helped so people but not for others; the resources just felt empty if you know what I mean (it's difficult to put this into words but simply, the resources weren't enough for many). The other option for those mentally struggling was to talk to our tutors but, since they are trained to be teachers, not all were helpful, some were too busy, and others were stressed out from their work and from annoying pupils. However, since the pandemic, many students experienced a mental decline and many sent emails to their tutors to seek help but this caused too much stress on their tutors and affected them badly. Consequently, they sent out an email to all students to not email their tutors any more because of this stress and told us to go to our GP or to use the same resources, so. It's a good thing that they care and prioritise the health of their employees but this just made many feel helpless (because going to a GP is not always easy as it sounds) and deter them from speaking about their feeling (worrying that they'll cause stress on other people).
So far with uni, we have a support service, a counselling service, and a well-being service and it's not so difficult to get an appointment at least once a fortnight. Honestly, our tutors and professors are more aware of the importance of mental health support unlike my secondary school which made it seem superficial (e.g., "if you feel low, do X, Y, Z and you'll feel better") and not too serious despite stating it to be serious. However, our uni services are similar to talk therapy and this may not work for many in the long term or not work at all, so I believe my uni needs different kinds of mental health support.

Former Member

CaniceQ wrote: »

I pretty much agree with all of the above posts. In secondary, there was a counselling service but most students did not know that we had one nor knew where we could find them. However, I've discovered that to use the counselling service was to be referred by a teacher who thinks that your mental decline is severe. Additionally, getting an appointment with a counsellor was difficult since they already had many students requesting one and there weren't many counsellors. So, that explains why we didn't know much about these things. The only thing they told us was to use the resources (basically websites that gave advice). These resources may have helped so people but not for others; the resources just felt empty if you know what I mean (it's difficult to put this into words but simply, the resources weren't enough for many). The other option for those mentally struggling was to talk to our tutors but, since they are trained to be teachers, not all were helpful, some were too busy, and others were stressed out from their work and from annoying pupils. However, since the pandemic, many students experienced a mental decline and many sent emails to their tutors to seek help but this caused too much stress on their tutors and affected them badly. Consequently, they sent out an email to all students to not email their tutors any more because of this stress and told us to go to our GP or to use the same resources, so. It's a good thing that they care and prioritise the health of their employees but this just made many feel helpless (because going to a GP is not always easy as it sounds) and deter them from speaking about their feeling (worrying that they'll cause stress on other people).
So far with uni, we have a support service, a counselling service, and a well-being service and it's not so difficult to get an appointment at least once a fortnight. Honestly, our tutors and professors are more aware of the importance of mental health support unlike my secondary school which made it seem superficial (e.g., "if you feel low, do X, Y, Z and you'll feel better") and not too serious despite stating it to be serious. However, our uni services are similar to talk therapy and this may not work for many in the long term or not work at all, so I believe my uni needs different kinds of mental health support.

exactly @CaniceQ

Amy22

I think schools should be more open to charity resources and even using The Mix as a main resource because of the range of topics here, it can be helpful to lots of people. I personally wished my school got a press pack from The Mix containing useful information that would have helped me when I was in school even though I already had support now and then. Also, I wished my college did more with The Mix though I know they are working with a company called togetherall which is a similar platform to The Mix.

spacedog

@CaniceQ I agree so much with that - and even my school got rid of the one councillor in their office and decided to create a huge "mental wellbeing inclusive space" which they spent an absurd amount of money on just to post about it constantly on social media and getting awards for it and so on - the people that work in that space aren't even councillors, the only help the offer is "talking about your feelings" and a guitar club

MatchaMia

Everyone's comments here have been insightful- my original reaction was that I was glad to know that I could relate with people in terms of the lack of mental health support in secondary school and uni, but that quickly followed with just sadness, it's horrible that so many people feel like they have to suffer in silence or alone because the services are unavailable or unhelpful. Although my secondary school would 'name drop' mental health or include it on 1/2 slides with resources on powerpoint, I feel like the whole attitude towards getting support was so negative that it created an unsafe environment for students to be true to their feelings- if not a negative attitude then dismissive which is still just as bad, It's like they want to appear supportive as a mask, and any groups that genuinely helped didn't get the attention and funds that they should've. I also think that some teachers at secondary aren't that compassionate at all- I understand It's their job to flag up any danger and alert parents for safeguarding reasons but they go about it in a way that (maybe not intentionally) creates a fearful atmosphere, almost like they're 'reporting a crime'.

I do remember that we had a 'mindfulness' club, not directly linked to mental health but definitely beneficial as we tended to do a lot of reflection and yoga as a way to find a calm and peaceful mind.

At university, I find that there is a lot more services available but they're usually unheard of. I feel like with the independence you get, you're kind of expected to reach out to those services first, but what I think people may not understand is that It's hard to reach out to something you didn't know existed because it's not spoken about, and even if you knew it existed, It's so hard for some people to put themselves out there without first feeling encouraged verbally or emotionally through the content the university puts out.

On a side note, I think teacher's should be mental health trained just as they would be first aid trained. When I did mental health training it was so useful and I learned so much, I never understood why It wouldn't be offered to teachers!