Ed Pinkney2013-05-18T05:30:22-04:00Ed Pinkneyhttp://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/author/index.php?author=ed-pinkneyCopyright 2008, HuffingtonPost.com, Inc.HuffingtonPost Blogger Feed for Ed PinkneyGood old fashioned elbow grease.How We Can All Make A Difference On University Mental Health & Wellbeing Daytag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2013:/theblog//3.27130042013-02-18T17:32:12-05:002013-04-20T05:12:01-04:00Ed Pinkneyhttp://www.huffingtonpost.com/ed-pinkney/
So it was with some trepidation that the idea of a University Mental Health & Wellbeing Day was put to me. Would it get lost in a sea of awareness days? Would the creation of yet another awareness day cause eyes to roll? I was unsure. But after thinking about it, I realised that an awareness day isn't just about trying to squeeze a date into the diaries of those who would otherwise be uninterested. It's also about aggregating the resources of those who are already involved with a cause - to get stuff done.
There are many people with an interest in university mental health; including university support staff, student unions, charities, and a growing number of student campaigners. But it's hard to unite everyone. The issues are complex, and we have our own narrow remits and institutional issues to deal with. This is where University Mental Health & Wellbeing Day comes in. For one day of the year we can try and take a step back from the individual problems we're working on, focus our resources on addressing the issues that exist across institutions, and know that there are others, all around the UK, who will be doing exactly the same.
Tomorrow is the second annual University Mental Health & Wellbeing Day, led by the University Mental Health Advisors Network (UMHAN). Amidst the campus events and activities aiming to raise awareness of mental health, there will be an opportunity to work towards accomplishing specific, shared goals. Goals that are unambiguous and worthy of broad support.
The most comprehensive guidance paper for university mental health is the Royal College of Psychiatrists'2011 report, which outlines a series of recommendations for how universities can improve the mental health of their members. In its recommendations, there is one that stands out for being relatively straightforward and achievable, and it's this in particular that, in 2013, campaigners have an opportunity to push for. The recommendation reads as follows:
"It is recommended that all higher education institutions have a formal mental health policy. This should ensure that they meet statutory obligations under disability legislation. It should also cover areas such as health promotion, the provision of advice and counselling services, student support and mentoring, and special arrangements for examinations (Universities UK/GuildHE Working Group for the Promotion of Mental Well-Being in Higher Education, 2006)."
At its most basic, a mental health policy represents an institution's commitment to supporting the mental health of its members. With it, staff and students can be familiar with the rights and opportunities offered to them, they can hold the institution accountable to its policy, and they can seek improvements to it when they deem it necessary. But it's more than this. It provides a shared starting point from which the institution and its members can collectively identify and explore broader issues that go beyond the scope of the institution, such as cultural and political factors affecting the Higher Education sector at large.
For the policy to be meaningful it needs to be actively monitored, and reviewed and updated to reflect the needs of students and staff, as well as ongoing changes that affect universities. This is why each university should be encouraged to make their mental health policy publicly available through their website.
In December I wrote an article asking, 'whose responsibility is student mental health?' There was no easy answer to it. But on University Mental Health & Wellbeing Day, there is something we can all do. We can give our support to the range of activities taking place. We can champion great work by students, staff, and institutions. And we can push for each institution to have in place a formal, up to date, and publicly available mental health policy. It might not fix everything, but it's a start.
Visit here to sign a petition urging the CEO of Universities UK - the representative body for 134 institutions - to encourage and support all of its member institutions in developing a mental health policy. ]]>Beyond Them and Us: Hobbits, Middle Earth, and the Joined-Up Approachtag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2012:/theblog//3.23560712012-12-23T12:28:01-05:002013-02-22T05:12:01-05:00Ed Pinkneyhttp://www.huffingtonpost.com/ed-pinkney/The Hobbit. It's got a different feel to Lord of the Rings, more light and playful, but there's a familiar subtext. In the Lord of the Rings, the story begins with rivalries between the Elves, Men, and Dwarves. As events unfold, and the groups realize that they face common threats, they put aside their differences and work together. This theme of division and reconciliation recurs throughout the trilogy. In the first of the Hobbit films there are flashes of the same, and as I watched it I found myself thinking about how it parallels real-world situations.
J.R.R. Tolkien published the Lord of the Rings trilogy in the 1950's, during a period of rapid post-war growth. From his romantic portrayal of nature and trees, and his linking of evil with furnaces and fire, he seems to have been worried about the destructiveness of global industrialisation. After the First World War, he entered academia, first at the University of Leeds, and then at Oxford, where he was a Professor of English until his retirement in 1959. If Tolkien was concerned about petty disagreements blinding people to greater issues, it's easy to see how the war might have been an influence. But his time spent on university campuses seems to have done little to allay fears about disjointedness.
In my first blog post, I called on institutions to do more to support students and suggested that stakeholders need to develop more joined-up approaches. The post received a comment that suggested I was showing the same sort of sweeping 'them and us' attitude that I was critical of. But in making this claim, the comment assumed that I didn't also see myself as one of 'them'. The pioneering Healthy Universities framework, developed through a collaboration between the University of Central Lancashire and Manchester Metropolitan University, sets out what can be accomplished on campuses by moving beyond this kind of bordered thinking.
One of the key struggles for mental health campaigners is to dissolve the 'them-us' divide between those with experience of mental ill-health and those without. Whenever I give a talk on mental health I try and emphasise that we are all in the same boat; that each of us has ups and downs, and each of us is vulnerable to periods of crisis if certain circumstances arise. This isn't just about removing discrimination against those with experience of mental ill-health, it's also about removing discrimination against those without such experience. Because much of what we experience is outside of our control, and experience of a particular event should be no prerequisite for empathy.
Often the problem is one of labels. The 'student' label faces its own form of discrimination. Students can be stereotyped as being lazy or ignorant or judged to have an easy life of partying and sleeping - the reality is that students are as diverse as the rest of society. There are some that are motivated and some that are less motivated, some that are taking advantage of social opportunities at university, and some that are already making important contributions to their field or profession. As it becomes harder for students to walk out of university into a profession, many are taking advantage of opportunities on and off campus to experiment with ideas and put theories into practice. They are becoming entrepreneurs, professionals, and experts, even before they graduate. If employers are going to take advantage of the unique skills and attributes within the student community, they will need to look past the 'student' label. In the meantime, for students that want to avoid getting stereotyped, it's easy. Just don't brand yourself a student.
Hindu culture calls the function that enables us to let go of surface-level 'them-us' discrimination, the 'third eye'. The mark that many Hindu people put in the centre of their foreheads to is a sign of their commitment to looking at people on a deeper level, one where we are united in shared struggles. To do this requires us to recognize those areas where we share common ground. This might be a shared goal of killing a fire-breathing dragon...or a shared concern for the welfare of those studying in higher education.
For institutions trying to improve support available to students, there are three key levels of working: the campus level, the local (city/region level), and the national level. On a campus level, institutions such as Leeds Metropolitan University are building wellbeing committees that contain representation from across the institution, and meet regularly to ensure that resources are used efficiently and approaches to student support are joined-up and implemented coherently. On a local level, there are committees such as the Leeds Student Mental Health and Wellbeing Group that contain members of nearby universities and statutory/voluntary organisations, and meet to discuss regional issues and plan campaigns. On a national level, there are bodies such as HUCS, UMHAN, and MWBHE that hold conferences and discuss sector policy. There is much good practice, but local collaborative efforts are still rare, and I've written about the funding constraints that affect MWBHE.
If things are going to improve then we need to look beyond the borders of our own departments and recognise our shared struggles. This means getting clear about our broader objectives and those people and organisations that have an interest in them. It also means identifying what resources we have to bring to the table and then coming together to have serious and lengthy discussions about what can be done.
Tolkien created a world in which the cultural differences between people are represented through dramatic physical differences. The point he makes - whether deliberately or not - is that if Hobbits, Men, Elves, and Dwarves can cross 'them and us' divides to work together, surely we can too.
Author's Note: Do you know a good example of joined-up thinking - either within higher education or elsewhere? Please post it below or contact me through the link in my description and I'll try and get it noticed.]]>If Universities Don't Respond To Student Suicide Figures, Student Campaigners Willtag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2012:/theblog//3.22851482012-12-12T10:22:11-05:002013-02-11T05:12:01-05:00Ed Pinkneyhttp://www.huffingtonpost.com/ed-pinkney/
A leading psychiatrist suggested to me earlier this month that this is what higher education is like when it comes to supporting students.
During the past four years, I have been involved with dozens of vibrant student-led events and campaigns that have made the subject of mental health more mainstream and accessible; but I have also been involved in some harrowing and somber discussions that have underlined the need for more to be done on a policy level. After the release of new student suicide figures, the past fortnight has mostly involved the latter.
When I uncovered the figures, I was researching for an article to mark the one-year anniversary of the Royal College of Psychiatrists' student mental health report. Although the report mentioned student suicide figures pre-2005, there didn't appear to be anything more recent. At a time when students have been facing unprecedented uncertainty, this was alarming. How can we make sure that students get the support they need if we aren't monitoring such crucial statistics?
I read up on the Freedom of Information Act, and reached out to the Office of National Statistics with an information request. They were quick and efficient in responding, and the data was published on their website. Even if - as the ONS officer told me - the numbers were too small to draw formal conclusions about trends, the figures were cause for concern. I'm still trying to work out why there was no one in the higher education or mental health sectors that was monitoring these figures. It's not as if it took me a great deal of time to access them. Perhaps the psychiatrist - with his parable - was right, and we're all just stumbling around blindly.
Mental health is a complex issue in any setting, never mind higher education. For one thing, what does 'mental health' even mean? The World Health Organisation describes it as "a state of well-being in which an individual realizes his or her own abilities, can cope with the normal stresses of life, can work productively and is able to make a contribution to his or her community." It's an upbeat definition that, despite being a bit wordy, everyone can relate to. But most of the time the term isn't used in that way - it's used to refer to mental illness. The title of the Department of Health's page on mental illness is not 'mental illness', but 'mental health'. The slogan for the anti-stigma campaign, Time To Change, is "let's end mental health discrimination", when the campaign is actually working to end discrimination against those with mental ill-health. It's no wonder the subject is difficult to discuss if we can't agree on the language to use.
On campuses, there's a further issue. For many students, going to university is their first time living away from home. And yet, despite (legally) being adults, they are still entering into the care of the institution. It's the duty of the institution to try and help them get to grips with university life, without impinging on their freedoms as an adult. That's not an easy job. Particularly during a period when institutions have been facing major upheaval.
But they do have help. In 2011, the Royal College of Psychiatrists published an update to their comprehensive report into student mental health (which I reviewed and extended here). The report provided a thorough overview of available statistics, of how support services work, and of what institutions should be doing. It emphasized the "pressing need" for more to be done, and discussed the current challenges facing students. With these new figures, we now know how pressing the need is. It is time for the sector to respond.
Meanwhile, as support services are being squeezed by budget cuts, compassionate and dedicated support staff are working tirelessly to help students get through a challenging period. Increasingly, staff are also getting help from the students themselves. And it's here, especially, that there is cause for optimism. More students than ever before are speaking out on the issue of mental health, and getting involved in campaigning. They are not just raising awareness of the subject, they are helping to bring together stakeholders and combine perspectives; they are working with support staff to try and overcome institutional short-sightedness.
When I setup the Mind Matters Society - the University of Leeds' student mental health group - our mission was to bring mental health out of the shadows on campus. We believed that there was some excellent support available to students, and that if we could create a bit more dialogue around mental health and signpost to services, then we might be able to save lives. That was four years ago, and - despite the news - I still believe it today. But some things have changed: we now know that institutions need to take action. And if policy-makers can't see this, then it will be down to the students themselves, to lead them.]]>