As predicted, last night’s opening debate at the Union Society, 'This House believes that Oxbridge is a force for good', descended into a vehement argument on the issue of private education.  Yet it also raised another issue.  Among the strongly worded arguments against privilege, the second speaker for the opposition, and the Union President, Tim Squirrel, briefly touched upon another topic before the final speaker for the opposition finally discussed it.

The issue was mental health, a problem that affects one in four people in the UK. Here in Cambridge, however, the problem is more severe. 92 per cent of students have experienced mental distress in some form or another and college welfare teams are taught to prepare for between fifty and sixty student suicide attempts a year.

Today is World Mental Health day, reminding us that we desperately need to think about mental illness in our community: a place in which it is not only widespread, but also stigmatised and misunderstood. Most of us know by now that Cambridge is a place in which 'all-nighters', reading 10 books a day and living off coffee and the Christian Union's free toasties isn't just a stereotype.  But not all of us know that it is also a place in which students struggling with this way of life are frequently given such gems of advice as 'think happy thoughts' by Directors of Studies (who, let's face it, after countless years in 'the Cambridge bubble' do not understand the real world).

Most worryingly, it is a place where this has been the norm for far too long. Just last term, in her article We Need to Talk, broadcaster and national newspaper columnist Liz Fraser recounted her battle with bulimia and depression whilst at Clare College 20 years ago, and when I recently wrote about how the bulimia and depression I suffered from at school worsened during my first and second years at Cambridge, I was staggered by the number of personal responses I received. They included a letter from a graduate from the 1970s who had suffered from anorexia and depression throughout their undergraduate degree.

Thankfully, even in the 18 months since my mental health difficulties lead to me taking a year out from Cambridge, the situation has improved. Most noticeably, the stigma of suffering from a mental illness has lessened considerably, largely as a result of the fantastic work of student activists like the aforementioned Mr Squirrel. A small step has also been made in the fact that new Tutors now have to undergo a day of training. Hopefully, as a result, they will avoid making some of the mistakes made year after year by the other untrained tutors, many of who have been doing their jobs for decades.

But, it is still not enough, and it's not just Directors of Studies and Tutors who need to get their acts together. Students can play a part too by changing the current climate surrounding mental health discussions.  We are the ones who can avoid the occasions when we let the drive, ambition, or (in some cases) the sheer bloody-mindedness that frequently characterises us justify us forgetting to look out for one another, or even ourselves. It is us who sometimes sit in supervisions trying to dismantle our fellow students' argument purely for the sake of it.  It is us who sometimes let jealousy get the better of us and try and put our fellow students down.  It is us who, too often, are so afraid of being perceived as weaker than our fellow students that we suffer alone, in silence. Only 17 per cent of us seek help, a figure we can try and change by supporting, rather than competing with, one another.     

That's obviously not to say that considerable responsibility doesn't rest on the shoulders of the University and its colleges, starting with the attitudes of Directors of Studies and tutors towards struggling students.  For one thing, it is not unreasonable to expect that students, unlikely to have met their tutor for more than a preliminary meeting in freshers' week, should be able to turn to their DoS, the person they see at least once a week, for some level of pastoral support rather than be told that 'it's really an issue for your tutor to handle'.  Nor is it reasonable for Directors of Studies, when confided in, to encourage students to panic about their academic results and coerce them into intermission, or for Directors of Studies and Tutors alike to trivialise mental health problems with flippant comments, as is too often the case.

Directors of Studies and tutors are in an ideal position to be a source of reassurance for students, directing them to the welfare resources available and offering support where necessary and appropriate. Although the University Counselling Service gets a lot of bad press due to long waiting times and many students reporting 'it didn't help me', the sad truth is that it has the same shortcomings as any other NHS mental health service.  In spite of this, with more counsellors per student than any other UK university counselling system, it offers a useful service to those lucky enough to get seen, as do the university's numerous other resources. There are several student-run alternatives like CUSU's Student Advice Service, the charity 'Student Minds' and JCR Welfare Officers.

There is also, finally, one thing that all of us can do to help resolve the mental health crisis plaguing our university. We can accept that it's ok to occasionally relax about...well... everything. Some Directors of Studies and tutors are still able to inspire students with a burning enthusiasm, passion and love for their subject, without making them feel that their entire future depends on them reading the entire works of Dickens before their next supervision.  Some students still aspire to greatness and expertise in their field without feeling obliged to do so.

Maybe these Directors of Studies, tutors and students know that there's a world beyond the Cambridge bubble.  Maybe they don't. Either way, the mental illness situation in Cambridge is something every one of us can work towards improving.