"Maybe you will be surprised to hear that Cambridge life helped my anxiety rather than worsened it."Simon Lock

Current statistics show that at least one in five people on the UK register suffer from a mental illness. Given such a high prevalence within the population, it would be expected that the issue would be represented in politics. However, it is only recently that the current Labour Shadow Cabinet has appointed a Minister for Mental Health, a position that previously did not exist. This may be due to the fact that mental health concerns and anxiety weren’t as commonly recorded five years ago. But they certainly steal the psychological limelight now.

The world we live in follows the supply - demand theory; it takes numbers for change to happen and only now is the government, together with the NHS, trying to improve the way it addresses mental health cases. Currently, and I say this from experience, the NHS doesn’t offer the personable and customised help that is needed. This is where I move from facts to real stories.

Welcome to the University of Cambridge, one of the most renowned universities there is, yet blanketed below the prestige lies a world of mental health issues. At some point during their course, the average Cambridge student is likely to experience some type of mental illness, with anxiety being the most prevalent. Some are lucky and power through Week Five, coming out on the other side unscarred. For others, such as myself, anxiety is an everyday struggle, magnified tenfold by the hectic life in the Cambridge Bubble.

In 2013 I experienced what I now, with hindsight, can call my first panic attack. It was relatively silly, caused by an inexplicable fear of sharing the silence of an exam hall during an AS-level mock. This was hardly a pivotal moment in my student life and I had no reason to panic like I did, but if anything anxiety isn’t predictable or logical.

Time only made it worse. It got to the point where I would have to avoid cinemas, theatre halls, sometimes even art exhibitions; those who know me would understand how much of a personal tragedy this last one was. By the time my a-million-and-one boxes arrived in Cambridge for the first time, I had seen two counsellors, read books about it and given meditation an unsuccessful go. Needless to say, my mind was in teeny tiny scattered bits of worry.

Maybe you will be surprised to hear that Cambridge life helped my anxiety rather than worsened it. I am sorry for not preparing you for this particular plot twist but it is a thought in the making as I try to draw a line under my first year and weigh in the progress. Why this is the case would be a perfectly logical question. First of all I have a brilliant tutor; one that wears Converse and whose take-it-as-it-comes mantra has started to rub off on me. He has been the stepping stone towards talking to a college counsellor who tries to accommodate me whenever possible, as well as to accessing university services.

I wouldn’t say that the university counsellor changed my life, neither was he likely to. He did make the very useful suggestion of trying out Headspace, a mindfullness app that helps ease you out of anxiety and create a daily routine around the ‘you’ll be okay’ mentality. Rather it was that I was talking to a complete stranger, adult to adult, about something that deep down I felt ashamed of, thinking that people would consider me weak or self-involved.

I am by no means trivialising it, but at the same time I have had to come to grips with the fact that this is my reality right now; I will have to learn to live alongside my anxiety and not ruin the very little time I have to enjoy university. I sincerely hope that the stigma around mental health and anxiety will end soon; perhaps the new position for a Minister for Mental Health will help, or perhaps it won’t. However, if fresher me was reading this last year, I would have liked to have said that, considering how many students suffer from mental health and anxiety issues, you will certainly not be alone and there will always be someone wanting to reach out and help.

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More information and help is available nationally on http://www.nimh.nih.gov/index.shtml or specifically in Cambridge at http://www.counselling.cam.ac.uk/