According to a report on student mental health, the peak onset of ‘mental disorders’ occurs between the ages 18 to 25. With 80 per cent of undergraduates falling within this age range, the welfare of students demands a unique analysis.

And for Dr Nicola Byrom, the founder of Student Minds – an organisation which focuses specifically on student mental health – the recognition that it is normal to struggle while at university is vital.

Byrom recalls initially not “really talk[ing] about my own experience with mental health difficulties or the stress I was experiencing at University because it didn’t seem like the ‘done thing’”. Yet, as she recognises, this was very much part of the problem. “I suppose that leads to feelings that ‘everyone else is doing fine – it’s just me that’s struggling here’”, she admits.

A turning point for Byrom occurred when she did bring mental health into the conversation. “What I found really surprising”, she tells me, “was when I did start to talk to people, so many just looked at me and said ‘Oh my god, me too!! Me too – that’s just how I’m feeling!’”

This conversation was revelatory. “A lot of us had been feeling that kind of stress, that anxiety”, Byrom reflects before noting the common tendency for people to believe that, because “everyone else is doing fine and having a great time”, they are abnormal in finding it difficult to manage their mental health.

“It was such a relief to know that this wasn’t just about me not managing, but that uni is a difficult experience. Knowing that I was not alone or different really helped. That’s what encouraged me to start setting up Student Minds”, she explains. “A huge amount of my stress at university was lifted when I realised that everyone else was just as stressed as I was!”

“When I did start to talk to people, so many just looked at me and said ‘Oh my god, me too!! Me too – that’s just how I’m feeling!’”

“So, I thought: ‘okay, this isn’t me being really strange, this is the norm. I’m just going through a normal university experience’. This didn’t take all my stress away, but it took a whole part of anxiety away”, she continues, highlighting that the “ideals” we measure ourselves against are neither “normal” nor realistic.

Expectations that university will unequivocally be the ‘best time of your life’ set the bar high. I ask Byrom what impact she feels this can have on student welfare, especially when it manifests in an image of ‘drinking culture’. 

“The stereotype of students as drinking a lot and not doing much else is incredibly unhelpful because it’s not really true”, she begins. “Research shows that you all drink a lot less than we did when I was at uni – not that I’m encouraging you to drink more”, she adds with a laugh. “But there’s a discussion of the phenomenon that you’re the generation of the teetotal university students. That culture is challenging because it creates pressure to be extroverted and ‘out there’ partying”, she concludes, noting how this can lead to isolation.

I ask Byrom how, as students, we can help to support each other. “It’s different for everybody. Everyone has their own ways of coping [but] one thing is creating time and space to listen to each other”.

“Though that has to be done with caution in mind”, she warns. “We’re very good at talking to each other about problems, just going over them again and again – it’s an effect called ‘rumination’. Sometimes when we talk to people about our problems, all we achieve is that conversation – of feeling that ‘oh god, this is a problem’. By the end of the conversation, you’ve just gone through the problem again and again. We end up more miserable than we did before the start!”

She continues, highlighting the importance of trying to be constructive: “It’s useful to talk, but it’s also useful to say ‘that conversation wasn’t from a positive angle’. In supporting someone, it can be helpful just to get outside of their bubble and do something you enjoy as friends”.

“If I was looking back to give advice to my own younger self, it would be to cut myself some slack.”

Nonetheless, she is also keen to emphasise the importance of self-care. After all, she argues, “as an individual student you can only do so much – it’s really important you take care of yourself first”.

I ask her how far we can feel responsible for student welfare, in roles for JCRs or at student unions. “In terms of community”, she tells me, “I think that a lot of that work has to be done by universities [and] I’m not too sure individual students ought to be held responsible for that”.

On that note, I ask Nicola what advice she would give to herself as an undergraduate. “If I was looking back to give advice to my own younger self, it would be to cut myself some slack”, she tells me. “Like many students, I really believed that university was just ‘one shot’ – which if I didn’t get right, nothing else in my life would work out”.

She expresses consternation at her belief that “it all had to happen then in those three years, which is crazy! It didn’t all have to happen then”, she insists, noting that “I’ve learned, since leaving university that so much can change”.

Need to stay in bed and watch Netflix? Completely okay

Looking beyond universities, Byrom is critical of the government’s approach to helping people look after their mental wellbeing: “I don’t think that the government want to deny that there’s a funding gap, but the challenge is, I think, much bigger than funding”, she explains, before clarifying that “I don’t mean to say that funding’s not a problem”.

Instead, Byrom believes that “one of the challenges the government has faced is that they’ve thrown money at it, but, because of stigma, commissioning groups haven’t allocated that money to mental health, even though it was supposed to go to mental health.” Indeed, in her view, the key challenge here is “to tackle the stigma, to make commissioning groups spend the money appropriately”.

“I also think that we can’t just think about mental health in terms of health care provision”, she continues, pointing out “it’s so much more than what happens when you go to see your GP.”

After all, she observes, “we all have mental health and we all need to look after it. I think that means we have to be doing much more work outside of the healthcare setting, to build communities that support people’s mental health.”