It’s likely that stress is something you’ve experienced. You might’ve felt stressed this week. You might even be feeling stressed right now. If you are, before we go any further I suggest you take two minutes to watch this video of a micro-pig having its belly scratched.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Be honest, you’re feeling better.

 

Feeling stressed is a perfectly natural, ordinary response to the trials and tribulations we all face in the course of our daily lives. It can even help us, by concentrating the mind and heightening the senses. But - and that’s a big, round, J-Lo-sized but(t) - too much stress (and too few micro-pigs) can have a disastrous effect on our mental health and wellbeing.

 

University students, says Colum McGuire, Vice President of Welfare at the National Union of Students, can be especially susceptible to stress. “University is quite a transient time of your life,” he says. “The stress students face just getting by, day to day, is huge.”

 

“Stress is something that we see surfacing regularly in association with pressures at school and university,” says Chris Leaman, Policy Manager at YoungMinds - the UK’s biggest charity concerned with the “emotional wellbeing and mental health of children and young people”.

 

“Exams and submission deadlines can feel overwhelming and sadly some students feel isolated at this time and like there is nowhere to turn for help.”

 

In a study commissioned by HEADUCATION, 54 per cent of student respondents agreed that university - specifically their courses - made them feel stressed or anxious. 46 per cent said that university was the main source of stress in their lives, and 45 per cent said stress had affected the quality of their work. 60 per cent of respondents were worried that stress would affect the quality of their work in the future. Check out our snazzy infographic for the full set of results.

 

But it’s not just the workload that makes students feel stressed, says Colum McGuire. “I certainly think work can be stressful, but if you pair that alongside worry over living expenses, the support network around them, and whether the support services on their campuses are adequate, it does equate to a student lifestyle which does tend to lead to stress.”

 

McGuire says that at a lot of universities, the right amount of support just isn’t available. “On the one hand we need to get students seeking support services and going to them, but when support services are already struggling with the demand of people coming through their doors, the really worrying question is what happens when you encourage people to go to them,” he says.

 

“Universities and colleges really do need to step up their game in terms of what they are providing on their campuses, and also work in partnership with the local community and health services in local areas to make sure students are seen at the right time when they need it.”

 

Student counseling is a tender issue, not least among universities themselves. We were unable to find a university counseling service that would comment on our study, but judging by the number of posts on student forums surrounding the topic, and hearsay evidence communicated to this writer - there seems to be an alarming disparity between the very best, and very worst university counseling services in the UK. This is especially worrying, given a recent study commissioned by the British Association for Counseling and Psychotherapy found that demand for on-campus counseling services has increased by 16 per cent in the past three years.

 

“Typically good services involve service users in the design and commissioning of services, have specialist trained staff, strong link up with others services and are well resourced enough to ensure that waiting times are short,” says Jenifer Phillips from YoungMinds.

 

Sam* made use of his university’s counseling service when he began to suffer from anxiety and depression. “I felt that my worries were treated with sincerity and concern,” he says. “The conversations with the counsellor were invaluable and proved to be a significant factor in recovering a sense of mental well-being.”

 

However, Sam does acknowledge that even the service he used isn’t quite there yet. “The service is infrequently promoted through the university's email system, and the centre itself is hidden away on the first floor of the main campus, meaning few students are aware of its presence."

 

Users of The Student Room - the world’s largest student forum, with more than 1.2million members - post frequently about such issues. While some users have had largely positive experiences, some have been left to fend for themselves. One anonymous poster wrote: “I had a session with a lady, she seemed too busy watching the clock. She also assumed things about me, which really annoyed me. I mentioned something and she pounced on it and said that was the route of my problems. Never going back again.”

 

Another poster said of her counsellor: “He spent most of our sessions sitting with his eyes shut, he fell asleep several times. He didn't seem to care, was incredibly patronising and deliberately worked me up into such a state that I left in near hysterics more than once and dreaded our sessions.”

 

Some universities have pioneered alternative stress-busting methods. Glasgow Caledonian University staged a ‘Hug a Pug’ day for its students, where, as the name suggests, students were able to drop in and fawn over a cuddly canine. “I think if this sort of activity is well managed, where it doesn't put the student or dog at risk is a short term solution to dealing with stress,” says Sinead Wiley, Vice President of Wellbeing at the university.

 

“Things like that are not a bad idea because they are quite good fun, and engaging for students,” says Colum McGuire. “My worry is when those sorts of things are the beginning and end of working towards a solution.”

 

University will always be a stressful time in one’s life, so it’s doubly important that the institutions themselves care as best they can for the welfare of their students, lest we begin to see a drop in pass-rates as more and more students are affected by stress. But, as Colum McGuire says, “an acute problem is not solved with an acute solution,”.

 

Luckily, it’s not our job to figure out what that solution is.

 

*Not his real name.