Author: Sarah Purdy

Today is University Mental Health Day, a campaign jointly run by Student Minds and the University Mental Health Advisors Network. 

Looking after our community’s mental health is, of course, a year-round commitment. So why – you may ask – is Thursday 3 March important?  

It’s an opportunity to bring our University community together around an issue that affects us all, and to join a nationwide conversation with other institutions. We want to help ensure no colleague or student feels alone with their mental health.  

Change, transition and wellbeing

For students, going to university has always been a time of change. Many are leaving home for the first time to experience a new city, new friends and a new way of life.  Although this can be very exciting and enjoyable, many students face difficulties during the transition to their new life – the last couple of years more than ever.

It’s also been a challenging time for our nearly 7,500 members of staff. I’ve previously talked about how I found feeling isolated and dealing with the problems created by the pandemic difficult, and I know from talking with colleagues how many of you have found the past couple of years especially hard.  

The COVID-19 pandemic has put greater pressure on us all but has particularly affected students whose experience of higher education has been far removed from what they imagined. Universities have an important role in looking after the wellbeing of their students. We aim to build a culture of proactively managing wellbeing​ through self-help, peer support, education around drugs and alcohol, sexual consent, and safety on campus,​ as well as programmes like B:Active Healthy minds.  

Our Student Wellbeing Service offers help and guidance to anyone experiencing challenges, or just wanting some extra support. Our Wellbeing Access​ team can triage and respond to students, directing them to appropriate services. We’ve kept waiting times for counselling low, and staff have trained in specialist areas, including support for those affected by sexual violence.   

More students tell us about problems affecting their mental health before they arrive, and we have increased resources for our disability and mental health advisors to provide additional support. Finally, more than 90% of our students now ‘opt in’ to allow us to contact someone if we are concerned about them.  

The Zero Suicide Alliance

This is not something that any institution can do alone. We work closely with our partners in the city to support our thousands of young people, often arriving in Bristol for the first time – from GPs and other NHS services to local organisations like Nilaari and Bristol Drugs Project.  

One of the charities we have recently partnered with is the Zero Suicide Alliance (ZSA), hosted by Mersey Care NHS Foundation Trust. It works with organisations across the UK to raise awareness of suicide and its contributing factors and aims to help break the stigma that still surrounds suicide.  

We are encouraging all students and staff to take an online suicide awareness course developed by ZSA in partnership with the NHS. The course has been designed to help us have potentially life-changing conversations with our friends, our colleagues and our wider community.  

The training will help you spot any warning signs, give advice on how to have a conversation with someone you’re worried about, and tell you where to go to get further support.   

If you do take the training, please look after yourself during the session. It’s designed to take 20 minutes, but we recommend allowing longer, so you can pause for breaks and take time to reflect. Try to do it alongside someone else if you can – either virtually or in person.  

I’ve done the training myself, and I was reminded how important it is to notice how those around us are; that it’s okay to ask questions if we’re concerned about someone, because although that may feel difficult to do, it can really help; and finally, that it’s really helpful to signpost where support is available.  

And please remember – today, tomorrow and every day: it’s okay to ask for help whenever you need it. Along with our wellbeing support for students, there is a variety of services available for staff too – including face-to-face counselling and online resources, which you can find on the wellbeing pages of our website. 

Thank you for reading this blog post – by looking out for each other we can make the University a safer place for everyone.  

Take the training: There is a specific training course for students, which can be accessed via the ZSA website. For colleagues, you can find the general training in Develop – just log in and search ‘ZSA’ in the catalogue. 

You can find our Student Mental Health and Wellbeing Strategy online. 

It was a long and cold winter, but that didn’t stop the student vets. Every fortnight they put on their biggest coats and headed into the city, handing out food parcels to homeless people with pets. They have been making sure no animal goes hungry for years – and neither cold weather nor a pandemic was going to stop them this time.

Students get a bad rap, but they make a huge contribution to our city, often in ways which go unnoticed.

They aren’t perfect (who is?) but having an extra 60,000 vibrant young adults in our city enriches it in a hundred ways, and we would be a poorer place without them.

Every day, thousands of students are doing their bit to help out. Not just through the hundreds of millions of pounds they contribute to our economy, but also with their vital voluntary work and the scientific breakthroughs that have far-reaching benefits for our city and beyond.

Many stay on, building businesses or working for our public services. Some go on to the stage or screen, to become scientists and politicians, renowned engineers and doctors – helping to export Bristol around the world.

The University of Bristol has nearly 29,500 students and UWE Bristol more than 30,000. Most of these eagerly spend their loans – hundreds of millions of pounds worth – on everything from local cafes to bus services.

In fact, a recent report found that spending by our students alone supported 4,540 jobs, and that’s not mentioning the 11,490 jobs the University of Bristol supports through its staff roster and spending with local companies. In total the university contributes £1bn a year to the region.

In 2014/15, the latest period for which figures are available, UWE Bristol supported 8,280 jobs in the region and contributed £400.1m to the local economy.

Meanwhile thousands of students volunteer in Bristol – and never have they been more needed than during the pandemic.

Over the past year more than 500 of our student medics have been working on the NHS frontline. From Abbi, a second year Bristolian determined to help out her home city, to final years like Luke, who gave up his summer to support NHS staff.

But it’s not just medics. A survey found that 30 per cent of our students volunteer in some capacity. Some help out with one of Bristol SU’s 15 student-led projects, others with hundreds of local organisations. Bristol students have been running food banks, sewing period pads for refugees, helping out in people’s gardens, putting in calls to the elderly, working with disability charities and much more.

It’s no different at UWE Bristol, where fashion students have been sewing PPE and delivering food packages worth £1,000 to local food banks.

And, of course, there are the student vets out every fortnight come rain or shine helping the homeless. Later this year they hope to set-up a free vaccination clinic for Bristol pet owners struggling to afford veterinary treatment.

Meanwhile, post-graduate students carry out world-beating research to Bristol. Marceli, a PhD student, has been embedded in a local ICU since the pandemic began, has been using technology to improve outcomes for patients.

Others develop new technology and then turn them into university spin-off companies.

Dr Harry Destecroix co-founded Ziylo while studying for a PhD at Bristol. The company developed new tech to help diabetes sufferers and was recently sold for hundreds of millions of pounds. He’s now the brains behind Science Creates Ventures, a Bristol-based venture capital firm which supports early-stage deep tech companies.

Some students never leave. Take Stephen Dunleavy who studied at Bristol and founded Humble Bee Films, which just produced the beautiful Attenborough’s Life in Colour series for the BBC.

Many, however, do, taking the good name of Bristol with them.

Every year thousands of international students graduate and head home as global ambassadors for Bristol. Others go on to great things: from actors like Simon Pegg and David Walliams, to the former head of MI5 Jonathan Evans and 13 Nobel laureates.

UWE Bristol’s Katie Alcott has helped more than 426,459 people in 617 communities reach safe water since she graduated and set up Frank Water.

Meanwhile, every year 1,400 fresh faced and eager nurses graduate from UWE Bristol. As with our final year medics, many of UWE Bristol’s third-year nurses and midwifery students chose to begin their NHS careers early when the pandemic struck.

Being a second home to nearly 60,000 students would be a huge benefit to any city, but having 60,000 talented, enterprising students so generous with their time? That is truly something to celebrate.

This article originally appeared in Bristol 24/7.

The reality of racism was brought into sharp and disturbing focus last week as we saw how for some people Black lives simply do not matter. Sadly, the death of George Floyd in the United States is not a one-off occurrence and Black communities across the globe face racism, violence, and discrimination on an everyday basis.

We stand in solidarity with our Black staff and students against all forms of racism and social injustice.  At times like these, it is all too easy to look to people of colour to educate those around them, adding to the pressure and trauma that many are already experiencing during this time.

We recognise that it is not the responsibility of our Black colleagues and students to convince us why we need to tackle societal, structural, and institutional racism. It is the responsibility of us all to eradicate racism. We will continue to challenge this through our research, our education, and our civic engagements.  Our University with its critical role in education and shaping social policy, must be at the forefront of the continuing struggle against prejudice and inequity based on race.

We recognise that, as a University, we still have our own issues, and we are working hard to address these. Many of our Black students and staff feel isolation and discomfort as they experience daily microaggressions across campus.  We encourage students and staff to report any incident of racial harassment and seek support from us.  There is no place for racism at our University.

As the global coronavirus pandemic continues, we are also aware of evidence that Black people, as well as Asian and Minority Ethnic (BAME) people, are at disproportionately higher risk of illness, death, and bereavement.  We are conscious that this places additional stress and burden on our community. We offer wellbeing and mental health support to all our staff and students including those affected by racism:

• Nilaari telephone counselling – this service is prioritising members of the BAME community who have recently lost a loved one (0117 952 5742; clare@nilaari.co.uk)
• Student Wellbeing Service
• Student support services
• Multifaith Chaplaincy
• Staff Mental Health and Wellbeing Support
• Black, Asian and Minority Ethnic Staff Network
• Report and Support
• Samaritans phoneline which is open and free 24/7 (116 123; jo@samaritans.org) or use their app

To find out more about our activities to support our institutional commitment to race equality please see our Institutional Statement on Race Equality