Student mental health: universities could be forced to involve parents
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Loading... - Nancy Williams
- 09 Oct 2021
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When Meg Zeenat Wamithi left home to study at King’s College London, she discovered, like many freshers, that it was a much bigger transition than she was expecting. With a history of anxiety and depression she struggled to settle in.
“I had feelings of stress about going to lectures, and felt really depressed about continuing university,” she says. “If I had a bad day I might miss lectures and then afterwards I worried about falling behind. I felt isolated very quickly.”
Wamithi, now in her second year, has set up a campaign group called My Mind Matters Too to improve support for students. “King’s was fantastic at academic support and setting you up with a buddy, but it was such a large organisation, I didn’t know where to turn for help,” she says. The university, which is working with Wamithi, recently approved a new mental health action plan, and has committed to seeing all students who ask for support within two weeks.
With one in four students accessing counselling services at some universities, the government wants to make students’ mental health a top priority.
Now the higher education minister, Sam Gyimah, says that if universities don’t “run with this”, the government will enforce it. He has sparked controversy by saying universities should act “in loco parentis” – stand-in parents to their students. University heads argue that their 18-year-old students are adults and should not need extra parenting.
Steve Fuller, professor of sociology at Warwick University says that university is a training to be an adult, and students shouldn’t expect handholding. “This idea is a consumerist one. It is saying kids have to feel good at university as they are paying for it,” he says.
Colin Riordan, vice-chancellor of Cardiff University, says: “It isn’t practical to expect universities, who might have 40,000 students, to act in loco parentis.” However, he admits universities have “hidden behind” data protection laws that mean problems must be kept confidential. “There are lots of things you can do, like raising awareness among staff and students about symptoms of mental health problems and who to speak to.”
Gyimah says: “This is not about mollycoddling or cushioning students from the experiences that are part and parcel of university life. But if someone has threatened to take their life three or four times, and as an institution you know that but you only contact their parents after they have done it, that is just not acceptable.”
He says he isn’t calling for a return to the boarding school mentality of the 1960s, when universities issued students with curfews and interfered in their relationships. Instead, he wants universities to commit to taking “very seriously” their responsibility for students’ mental wellbeing, he says. “Some of the arguments against this are designed to sidestep rather than face up to the serious problem over mental health in universities.”
In particular, Gyimah wants universities to ask students at enrolment for their permission to contact a parent or other trusted person if they are facing a mental health crisis.
Two weeks ago Bristol University, where 11 students have died in the past two years, said 94% of students had opted into a system of giving mental health alerts to parents.
The University of West of England in Bristol has a similar system. Prof Steve West, the vice-chancellor, explains the scenario in which the university might contact a parent. “At the start of term we sometimes see hospitals returning students to campus having taken an overdose. This is often emotionally driven, drug or alcohol-fuelled behaviour. We insist parents come to campus that day and help us to understand and manage the situation.” However, he says students should never feel the institution would breach their confidentiality over minor issues, or they will not reach out for help.
Dr Gil Myers, consultant child and adolescent psychiatrist at Whittington hospital in North London, warns that this sort of system must be flexible. “It’s an individual situation. Not everyone comes from a supportive family, and sometimes parents can be a contributing factor to the student’s difficulties.”
UWE is a long way ahead of many universities on student mental health. It is training support staff, including security guards and receptionists, to recognise and deal with mental health issues. And the university is using data analytics to help identify students who are disengaging.
But West says: “However good we are, there is no way we will know the ins and outs of thousands of students when they arrive.”
Smita Jamdar, partner and head of education at law firm Shakespeare Martineau, which works with about 50 universities, is strongly opposed to the minister’s use of the legal language of “in loco parentis”. “We talk about university as a place of growth and maturing into full emotional adulthood. So to have a suggestion that universities should be watching every aspect of your life to check you are not deteriorating mentally is hugely problematic,” she says.
Dominique Thompson, clinical adviser to the mental health charity Student Minds and a former university GP, says students often don’t declare a history of mental health problems because they want a fresh start. “It’s understandable, but creates a huge problem for universities and university GPs.”
She adds that most students who kill themselves are not seeking counselling at the time. “We need to focus on why they didn’t seek help and enable them to do so.”
