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What should be done about student mental health?

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What should be done about student mental health?

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Discussion between vice chancellor of the University of the West of England, Professor Steve West, and a student on the factors contributing to poor mental health at university

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What should be done about student mental health?

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Professor Steve West is vice chancellor of the University of the West of England, who chairs the Universities UK Mental Health Working Groups, and Zoe Scholes is a student who has taken a break from her degree to concentrate on her mental health.

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UNIVERSITY OF MANCHESTER LAUNCHES ONLINE COURSE FOR STAFF TO RESPOND TO STUDENT MENTAL HEALTH PROBLEMS

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UNIVERSITY OF MANCHESTER LAUNCHES ONLINE COURSE FOR STAFF TO RESPOND TO STUDENT MENTAL HEALTH PROBLEMS

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University of Manchester is using an online course to teach staff how to recognise and respond to signs of mental ill health in students

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31st May 2018
The University of Manchester has launched a new online e-learning course designed to help its staff respond to signs of mental illness in students.
The course comes at a time where a recent Universities UK report has said that student mental health provision risked "failing a generation" and some students may be "slipping through the gaps" between university and NHS provision.

The student mental health course will allow staff across the University, whatever their role, to learn useful information about student mental health and also to learn some basic skills around managing students who are presenting signs of mental ill health or are at risk.

With a staff population of around 12,000, the e-learning course will enable the University to scale their mental health training for staff while keeping the content highly engaging and illustrative through the use of video content. The course contains videos that were made on the Manchester campus and the University helped design all the content.

Sarah Littlejohn, Head of The Counselling Service at The University of Manchester, described how student mental health is becoming a key priority for the University:

"The University is investing time, thought and resource into the whole area of student mental health, both in terms of the support it offers to students and also to staff in their roles. This course is a clear example of that and is a reflection of our general approach to supporting students and being responsive to mental health difficulties.

"The mental health of students is a key concern for all universities. In order to raise the awareness and the skills level of staff across the University, we needed training that had scale and reach. Although we offer face-to-face workshop training, we could never hope to reach the numbers of people that we aimed to, so we wanted to supplement the more intensive face-to-face training with the broader availability of online learning.

"Whether you're a student support office worker, an academic, working in residences or in security, any of the people in contact with students can encounter those struggling with their mental health and will need to learn how to respond."

David Marshall, Founder of Marshall E-Learning, explains the impact the online course will have for the University:

"The University now has an innovative product that offers staff and students at the University of Manchester something they haven't had before. The course is going to form part of a suite of learning modules for training around supporting students with their mental health. And with a large staff population, only e-learning can offer the reach and scale needed for an issue such as student mental health."

"For every student who does attend the counselling service, there may be many more who feel isolated and even drop out of university, so it is student-facing staff of all kinds who will benefit from being able to detect and respond to some of the early signs of mental health issues in a student."

"In general, we have seen a big increase in universities investing in e-learning courses for students rather than staff - the overriding theme is pastoral support. As such we have worked carefully with a number of institutions to prepare smartphone compatible tutorials that will support the efforts universities are already making to support students".

The script and key learning points for the student mental health course were developed by members of the University of Manchester team with technical expertise, including the videos and e-learning tool, provided by Marshall E-Learning.

The resource makes use of video clips illustrating a range of possible responses to common presenting difficulties and learners are given the opportunity to compare how different interactions might go and consider their potential outcomes. A written commentary on the interchange highlights the key decision points involved in managing these conversations well.
For those interested in finding out more about the student mental health course, please contact David Marshall on 0845 123 3909 or email contactus@marshallacm.co.uk.

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University of Manchester launches online course for staff to respond to student mental health problems - Marshall E-Learning

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The University of Manchester has launched a new online e-learning course designed to help its staff respond to signs of mental illness in students. The course comes at a time where a recent Universities UK report has said that student mental health provision risked "failing a generation" and some students may be "slipping through the...

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Education Secretary backs system to flag university students' mental health problems to parents

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Education Secretary backs system to flag university students' mental health problems to parents

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The Education Secretary has backed a system to flag university students' mental health problems to parents.

Damian Hinds has urged vice-Chancellors to "get better at reaching out to family members" if a student is struggling, adding that this would be a "big step" towards improving pastoral care.

His comments come ahead of an event today, hosted by the vice-Chancellor membership organisation Universities UK, aimed at developing advice for universities on consent for disclosure to third parties about students who are in difficulty.

James Murray, who is the father of the tenth Bristol University to take his own life, has campaigned for a change to data protection rules prevent further deaths at universities.

His son Ben, 19, died in May and it was only after his death the family discovered Ben had been falling behind in his studies, missing lectures and had been put in a "withdrawal process" by the university who were considering his "fitness to study".

Universities say that under data protection laws, they are unable to share confidential information about students - who are over the age of 18 so legally regarded as adults - without their express permission.

But Mr Murray has called for the rules to be relaxed so parents can be told if students are struggling.

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Education Secretary backs system to flag university students' mental health problems to parents

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The Education Secretary has backed a system to flag university students' mental health problems to parents. Damian Hinds has urged vice-Chancellors to "get better at reaching out to family members" if a student is struggling, adding that this would be a "big step" towards improving pastoral care.

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Bristol University faces growing anger after student suicides

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Bristol University faces growing anger after student suicides

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Students’ experiences of mental health services at University of Bristol

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Bristol University faces growing anger after student suicides

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Backdrop to exam season is mounting concern about student mental health

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Minority Stress

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Minority Stress and the Health of Sexual Minorities

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Link between Neoliberalism and Mental Health

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New School Economics Goldsmiths University

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Neoliberalisation in Higher Education

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Public lecture: Neoliberalism, Marketisation and Higher Education

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Cecily Jones |

Mental health problems among students has reached crisis proportions, according to recent reports[i]. While most research studies have focused on the mental health and well-being of undergraduate students, anecdotal evidence suggests that today's postgraduates face unprecedented pressures that make them equally vulnerable to poor mental health. The stress points are many - multiple submission deadlines for super-competitive funding bids, research proposals, conference abstracts and papers, thesis chapters, managing relationships with sometimes ambivalent supervisors, pressure to publish before submission, facilitating undergraduate seminars and the seemingly never-ending cycle of setting and marking assessments. And then there's the psychological side -feeling isolated, imposter syndrome, loss of motivation, low confidence, uncertainties about the value and validity of their research subject, and future career prospects. PhD students deal with all of this while struggling to maintain a wholesome balance between research and family/social life.

These problems - and more - are experienced by postgraduates, but institutional racism, discrimination, and hegemonic white privilege make universities toxic spaces for Black and Minority Ethnic (BAME) students and faculty. So pervasive does racism on camps appear to be that over half the students in an NUS survey reported having experienced racism and racist discrimination. And a quick look at blogs and other postings by BAME students on social media such as Twitter and Facebook reveal high levels of frustration arising from everyday micro-aggressions structuring their interactions with white students and faculty. Others talked of the unbearable whiteness of university campuses, lack of cultural and ethnic diversity, of exclusion from student networks, of isolation and being 'the only one' in seminar groups and halls of residences, of biased faculty who unfairly graded and/or challenged the authenticity of their work, of supervisors who proved hostile to critical race or non-western intellectual traditions, questioned their intellectual capacity for postgraduate study. Recent media efforts to stoke anti-Black outrage in response to BAME student led Decolonizing the Curriculum movement, which called for critical discussions of ethnocentric curriculum dominated by western white male intellectuals, the support and outcomes for BAME students, exposed the academic racial fault line.

Not surprisingly many BAME students in the NUS survey described their academic careers as a period fraught with undue stress, and inadequate support, so that some intermitted from, or abandoned their studies altogether. Again, UK data on postgraduate attrition rates does not indicate ethnicity, but USA evidence suggests 47% completion rates for African-Americans, 10% lower than white peers. Senior Lecturer and the University of Manchester's Academic Lead for Equality Diversity and Inclusion, Dr Dawn Edge, argues that racism, discrimination, adversity and alienation are key contributors to the problems encountered by BAME students. Dr. Edge went onto state that "People from BAME communities tell us that the constant stress of racism and surviving in often hostile environments can trigger mental illness'. Furthermore, severe stress is known to contribute to, or exacerbate, pre-existing medical conditions prevalent among BAME groups, such as TT diabetes, and sickle cell anemia. Managing multiple competing demands is a cocktail for vulnerability and potential mental illness

Even where universities provide supportive counselling, students point to their failure to understand, and to be responsive to the structural barriers and cultural attitudes held by many BAME communities towards mental health - for instance, the concept of depression is unknown among some ethnic groups, and so some students were unable to recognize the symptoms. Yet others talked of cultural taboo and stigma surrounding mental health, while others avoided mental health services because of racialized stereotypes that associated drug use with poor mental health. Many UK students were aware of the troubled historical relationship between the mental health sector and the black communities, evidenced in the over representation of BAME people sectioned within psychiatric institutions. As well, some support services failed to recognize the heterogeneity of BAME postgraduates and hence their different needs - for instance, international BAME postgraduates had to adjust to a new environment and new pedagogical cultures, while for BAME LGBTQ students, living at the intersections of race and sexuality, compounded the problems of living in heteronormative white spaces.

So, what steps can BAME postgraduate students take to complete the doctoral journey with wellbeing and mental health intact? How do you maintain your creativity, motivation and passion for your thesis amid the emotional, physical and psychological stresses?

Recognize the symptoms: https://www.mind.org.uk/information-support/types-of-mental-health-problems/depression/symptoms/#sign Remember - stress isn't in itself a sign of poor mental health - though if not addressed, it can lead to more serious problems such as anxiety, panic attacks, depression

Don't feel embarrassed about seeking support from university counselling services. Counsellors are there to help you overcome difficulties and suggest strategies for resolving your problems.

Seek support from, and offer support to, other postgraduate students

Join your university's black students' societies. If you're finding it hard to meet other BAME students on campus, search out opportunities for connecting with black postgraduate networks outside of your university e.g. some subject associations or conferences have streams for BAME postgraduates

Become a member of one or more of the on-line support groups for BAME students, e.g. Black PhD Network, Black British Academics. Some groups have open membership, while others are more specific e.g. women only, LGBTQ only, etc.

Approach an empathetic academic whom you respect and ask if s/he would be willing to act as a mentor. A good mentor doesn't have to share your social background (race, sexuality, religion etc) and you may find that BAME faculty may be too busy to offer the level of support you require.

If you are a member of a religious group, seek support from an understanding religious organization or the non-denominational chaplain at your university or community

Self-care is critical! Pencil in some guilt free Me Time in your diary and treat it with the same respect that you do other life commitments...go for a daily walk, run, gym-time, 'treat' whatever - Support and advice will help you with manage stress, but self-care is essential to recovering your emotional and mental wellbeing.

That racism is bad for mental health is clear, but what remains to be known is the extent of its impact on BAME postgraduates and faculty, whose mental health is compromised by the grit and resilience required to strive and successfully survive in predominantly white institutions.

Cecily Jones holds a PhD in Sociology (Goldsmiths College, University of London), an MA in Race and Ethnic Studies (University of Warwick,) and a BA in Sociology (Sussex University). She has published widely on the intersections of gender, and race, (especially on whiteness), social class and sexuality in Caribbean and US slave societies, and more recently on enslaved childhood in the Caribbean. She is a former Associate Professor of the Department of Sociology, University of Warwick, where she continues to hold Associate Fellow status, and more recently was a Senior Lecturer at the Institute for Gender and Development Studies, Mona Unit, University of the West Indies, in Jamaica. You can get in touch with here on twitter.

[i] Thorley C (2017) Not By Degrees: Improving student mental health in the UK's universities, IPPR. www.ippr.org/publications/not-by-degrees

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BLACK AND MINORITY ETHNIC POSTGRADUATES AND MENTAL HEALTH | Pubs and Publications

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Cecily Jones | Mental health problems among students has reached crisis proportions, according to recent reports[i]. While most research studies have focused on the mental health and well-being of undergraduate students, anecdotal evidence suggests that today's postgraduates face unprecedented pressures... Continue reading →

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SPONSORED: Mental health issues in higher education is going to be a big challenge for universities
By Toby Margetts ia Strategy Consultant at Squiz.
In 2016 the suicide rate of UK students overtook the suicide rate of young people in the general population for the first time ever. 146 students ended their own lives, representing a 56% rise since 2007.

It's hard to say, for sure, why we are seeing this steady rise in student suicides but there is a widely acknowledged and proven link between poor mental health and suicide rates. There are a number of factors that are likely contributing to the general lowering of UK students' mental health:
A generation of social media users
Many of today's university students and graduates are the first to have had exposure to social media from school age. In a survey of 1,000 individuals from Generation Z, 41% stated that social media platforms make them feel anxious, sad or depressed. Platforms like Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat and Twitter have strong links to anxiety, depression and self-esteem issues amongst users as they're exposed to airbrushed and filtered versions of other people's realities that don't compare with their own.
Owning a home is a pipe dream for many
A report in the Guardian estimates that a third of millenials will never own their own own home. The same report suggest that half will be renting into their 40s and 33% could still be renting by the time they claim their pensions. Today's students face the very real prospect of lifelong renting or long stretches living with parents and this is likely contributing factor to poor mental health.
Tuition fees are at an all time high
Students are being saddled with enormous debts and the bleak reality that they might never fully pay them off. Mintel's Student Finance UK 2017 Report showed that 57% of students in the UK are worried about the level of debt they will have when leaving university, rising to 63% of women.
The graduate job market is more competitive than ever
High Fliers annual graduate market report, 'The Graduate Market in 2018' revealed that the number of graduates hired by organisations featured in The Times Top 100 Graduate Employers fell by 4.9% in 2017 this the first drop in graduate recruitment for five years and the biggest annual fall recorded since 2009. The same report found that employers in eight out of thirteen key industries and employment areas hired fewer graduates in 2017 than the year before.
Brexit is imminent
An increasingly uncertain political landscape is seeing many students - and young people in general - facing up to a reality outside the European Union with Brexit looming. 75% of those aged 18-24 voted against Brexit, clearly valuing the certain aspects of the EU such as the ability to live and find graduate roles freely throughout 28 member countries.

It should be acknowledged that many of the factors that are precipitating this steady deterioration in mental health and rise in student suicides are out of the control of higher education institutions. Universities have no influence over house prices and Brexit, for example. But universities do have a responsibility to ensure that they provide adequate support to their students.

First and foremost this is an ethical consideration. It should be the responsibility of universities (and any other service provider) to recognise customers that might be struggling with mental health issues and to proactively provide assistance to them, simply because it's the right thing to do. The altruism attached should be ample incentive, however higher education institutions face a further reward in terms of student retention. Happy, mentally healthy students are undoubtedly more likely to complete their courses, achieve higher grades and contribute substantial amounts of money in tuition fees compared with those that drop out.

Student retention, alongside student acquisition and student engagement is one of the most important objectives for many universities. Any modern student retention strategy will need to consider the mental health of its students as a key component to ensuring students remain in their studies and perform to the best of their abilities.

So what does such a strategy look like? On a practical level here are some ideas on how universities can better support their students' emotional wellbeing
Data-backed diagnosis
Data stored in CRMs combined with AI data analysis tools can produce remarkably accurate assessments of how likely a student is to drop out of university. Students, of course, drop out for a variety of reasons, many of which aren't linked to mental health, but by knowing that a student is at risk of dropping out, universities can put measures in place to engage with the student and to determine whether mental health is a contributing factor. As data analysis gets more sophisticated, it will be able to identify students that are exhibiting mental health issues and action can be taken.
Student counselling services
Fortunately the stigma attached to mental health issues is diminishing quickly and students are far more likely to report problems when they have them. Ahead, the Association for Higher Education Access and Disability, said a 46% rise in the number of students with mental health conditions in the last academic year was most likely linked to improved supports and reduced stigma. Universities must provide accessible counselling services on both a virtual and real-world basis that give students an outlet to talk openly about their issues.
Anonymous helpline
For those that want more privacy, an anonymous helpline should be made available that allows students to discreetly get in touch and seek help.
Mental health as a key part of a content strategy
Any university content strategy should include an approach to tackling mental health issues. Finding online support through the university website or other portals will often be the first port-of-call for students seeking help and the content, usability and user-experience of the site should be good enough to direct students towards the information they need as quickly as possible.

A nice example of a university doing this well is the University of Northampton, that have an entire blog dedicated to improving students' mental health.
Student-staffed outreach programmes
Universities have always used their current and past students to showcase to prospective students what life could be like at the university. Customers are generally wary of organisations trying to sell them things, whether it's education or ice cream. For that reason, student-staffed support services are likely to be more trusted, relatable and more widely used by those in need.

In conclusion it's clear that tackling mental health issues in higher education is going to be a big challenge for universities. Those that do it well not only fulfill a duty to their students but will also likely improve their retention rates, boost their revenues, bolster their reputation and become more successful organisations as a result.

In the UK, the Samaritans can be contacted on 116 123. In the US, the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline is 1-800-273-8255. In Australia, the crisis support service Lifeline is 13 11 14. Other international suicide helplines can be found at www.befrienders.org.
is a Strategy Consultant at Squiz. He has over six years of experience working in many disciplines including digital strategy, UX, content, and creative processes. He is responsible for gaining a deep understanding of clients' needs, the needs of their users and the marketplace, enabling strong planning and creative outputs that meet the project goals and objectives.

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The mental health timebomb in higher education - University Business

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By Toby Margetts ia Strategy Consultant at Squiz. In 2016 the suicide rate of UK students overtook the suicide rate of young people in the general population for the first time ever. 146 students ended their own lives, representing a 56% rise since 2007.

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This article contributes to the existing literature on neoliberalism as an ideological hegemonic project by addressing how the image of social reality it advances normalizes the medicalization of human life. Because success, virtue, and happiness in a neoliberal market society are often associated with material wealth, prestige, and "coming out on top," it follows that normalcy itself is typically conceived along these reified objectives. Acquiring services and/or products that might aid people to meet these results is thus viewed as benevolent and perhaps even indispensable in the pursuit of a fulfilling and productive life. What this also suggests is that integration, mental health, and human well-being become largely functions of consumerism. We address how an emphasis on medicalization, particularly the use of psychotropic drugs, can be traced to the psychopharmacological revolution of the mid-twentieth century and its obsession with situating illness within the individual. We then address how this obsession with medicalization and the tendency to treat "mental illness" as a problem within the individual continues to be supported within the prevailing neoliberal logic that downplays the social realm, treats individuals as self-contained agents, and pathologizes thoughts and behaviors that deviate from what the market defines as functional, productive, or desirable.

Conrad, Peter . 2000. "Medicalization, Genetics, and Human Problems." Pp. 322-33 in Handbook of Medical Sociology, 5th ed., edited by Bird, Chloe E., Conrad, Peter, Fremont, Allen M.. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall.
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Cox, Robert W. 2002. Political Economy of a Plural World: Critical Reflections on Power, Morals, and Civilization. New York: Routledge.
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Whitely, Martin, Raven, Melissa. 2012. "The Risk that DSM-5 will Result in a Misallocation of Scarce Resources." Current Psychiatry Reviews 8:281-86.
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Neoliberalism and the Commodification of Mental Health

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This article contributes to the existing literature on neoliberalism as an ideological hegemonic project by addressing how the image of social reality it advances normalizes the medicalization of human life. Because success, virtue, and happiness in a neoliberal market society are often associated with material wealth, prestige, and "coming out on top," it follows that normalcy itself is typically conceived along these reified objectives.

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With the rate of university student suicides rising over the last 10 years, mental health has become a topic of increasing focus in Prevalence of mental health issues higher education. This analysis examines the prevalence of mental health issues within the student-aged population, before exploring issues affecting mental health prevalence and the barriers that may prevent students from receiving the help they need. Figure 1: Diagnosed CMD experienced in the past week in 1993, 2000, 2007 and 2014, by sex
Sixty-four per cent of the university student population (and 83 per cent of the undergraduate population) are between 16 and 24 years old, an age group that is particularly vulnerable to mental health issues, as 75 per cent of mental health problems are established by the age of 25. Data from the Adult Psychiatric Morbidity Survey shows an increase in the prevalence of common mental disorders (CMDs) for 16- to 24-year-olds, indicating that today's young adults are more likely to experience mental illness than previous generations. In England, the proportion of 16- to 24-year-olds experiencing a CMD rose from 15 to 19 percent between 1993 and 2014, representing an increase of over 25 per cent.

Figure 1 shows that this increase is mainly driven by women, who are almost three times more likely to experience a CMD than men. Between 1993 and 2014, the proportion of 16- to 24-year-old women experiencing a CMD increased by 38 per cent, compared with a decrease of three percent for 16- to 24-year-old men.
Figure 2: Diagnosed CMD experienced in the past week by age and sex
The extent to which younger adults (16- to 24-year-olds) are more likely to experience mental health issues than older adults (25- to 54-year-olds) is unclear: although CMDs were slightly more prevalent in older adults, the rise in the proportion of younger adults experiencing a CMD between 1993 and 2014 was sharper than the rise for older adults. In addition, younger adults are more likely to have suicidal thoughts, attempt suicide, and self-harm than older adults.
Suicide in higher education
However, there is a disparity by sex when comparing CMD prevalence in younger and older adults. In 2014, the proportion of 16- to 24-year-old women who experienced a CMD was higher than the proportion of women in all other age groups. Women in this age group were also approximately one and a half times more likely to have suicidal thoughts or attempt suicide, and almost three times more likely to self-harm than all women on average. Conversely, 16- to 24-year-old men were among the least likely to experience a CMD, with lower rates occurring only in men aged 65 and above. They were also no more likely to have suicidal thoughts and attempt suicide than men in other age groups.

For students in higher education specifically, there is also evidence of increasing levels of reported mental health issues. The proportion of UK-domiciled first-year students at higher education institutions (HEIs) who disclosed a mental health condition in 2015/16 was two per cent, five times the proportion in 2006/07. Furthermore, a survey conducted by the Institute for Public Policy Research (IPPR) revealed that the demand for counselling services has increased significantly. Ninety-five per cent of HEIs reported an increase in the demand for counselling services, and for 61 per cent of HEIs this increase was greater than 25 per cent.
Figure 3: Rate of suicide among higher education students in England and Wales, by sex.
It is true that the mental health prevalence trends discussed above may reflect an increase in disclosure due to greater public awareness and reduced stigma surrounding mental health conditions, rather than an actual increase in prevalence. However, student suicide rates have also increased by 52 per cent since 2000/01, reaching 4.7 per 100,000 of the population in 2016/17. Given the strong link between suicide and mental health issues (over 90 per cent of suicides and suicide attempts are associated with a psychiatric disorder), the increasing suicide rate indicates that both disclosure and prevalence of mental health issues are on the rise.
Possible factors affecting student mental health
Looking into variations by sex, we notice that men are at the greatest risk of suicide. Despite being almost three times less likely to report experiencing a CMD, suicidal thoughts or suicide attempts, male students were more than twice as likely to die by suicide than female students between 2012/13 and 2016/17. This suggests that the gender gap in the prevalence of CMDs may be partly attributed to men being more likely to underreport their mental health difficulties, rather than representing a true difference in CMD prevalence between men and women.

Students over the age of 25 were overrepresented among undergraduate students who died by suicide: they accounted for 46 per cent of undergraduate student suicides in 2016/17, despite only accounting for 31 per cent of the undergraduate student population, while students aged 24 and younger accounted for 54 per cent of suicides in 2016/17.

Changing demographics in higher education may partially account for the higher prevalence of mental health issues. The number of young people from disadvantaged backgrounds in higher education has increased over the last five years. Three of the indicators used by the Higher Education Statistics Authority (HESA) to measure widening participation are the state school marker, low participation neighbourhoods and parental education. Between 2012/13 and 2016/17, the number of higher education students:

from a low participation neighbourhood increased by 13 per cent;

whose parents did not attend university increased by 23 per cent;

from a state-funded school or college increased by nine per cent.

While mental health issues can affect individuals in all socio-economic groups, being from a more socially disadvantaged background is associated with a substantially higher risk of experiencing a CMD.

In addition, financial and academic stressors associated with university life may have a negative impact on mental health. Research has linked high financial concerns with poor student mental health, suggesting that increasing financial concerns may provide a partial explanation for the rise in mental health issues in higher education students.,

Today's students are faced with larger debts than previous generations, particularly in light of the rise in tuition fees and the abolition of maintenance grants. The 2018 repayment cohort had an average loan balance of £34,800 upon entry into repayment. This is almost twice the average loan balance of the 2013 repayment cohort and more than three times the loan balance 2008 repayment cohort, reflecting the escalating costs associated with higher education. In a Unite Students survey, 41 per cent of students reported feeling very or fairly concerned about being able to repay their loans, with this figure rising to 48 per cent for students from the lowest socio-economic group. However, it is important to note that these concerns may reflect students' perception of their loans rather than the reality of the student finance system: loan repayments are income-contingent, and three-quarters of graduates will never fully repay their student loans.

There is also some evidence to suggest that students feel financially strained as they manage their own finances for what is often the first time. A poll conducted by HSBC found that one fifth of students spent all of their student loan within the first 100 days, with the average student spending almost three fifths of their loan in this time period. Over 60 per cent of the students surveyed by Save the Student did not think that their maintenance loan was enough to live on, and 46 per cent reported that these financial difficulties negatively impacted their mental health.

The academic demands of university life may also be a significant source of stress. In the Unite Students survey, 71 per cent of respondents reported that 'performing well in tests and coursework' caused them stress, and 65 per cent felt stressed trying to keep up with their studies. 'Study' was also found to be the primary stressor among university students in a YouGov survey, as reported by 71 per cent of students.
Treatment barriers for students in higher education Most mental illnesses manifest at a young age, and the stress faced by university students may have a further negative impact on their mental health. Yet, 16- to 24-year-olds are least likely to receive any form of treatment for their mental illness, regardless of the severity of their symptoms. In part, this could represent an unwillingness to disclose a mental illness or seek help due to the stigma that still surrounds the topic. In a Student Minds survey identifying 93 challenges facing student mental health, students ranked fear of being judged as the biggest challenge and the idea that mental health issues are seen as a weakness as the fourth biggest. An ECU survey reported similar findings. Of those who did not disclose their mental health issues or seek treatment, two of the main reasons that they gave for this were not wanting other students to think less of them and fearing 'unfair treatment' from their institution as a result of their illness. Furthermore, the Equality Challenge Unit (ECU) found that around one half of student respondents who had experienced mental health difficulties during their time at university had not received any therapeutic support, adjustments to course assessment, or other forms of academic/mental health support provided by universities.
It is unclear whether academic demands are a greater source of stress among higher education students today compared to older cohorts - however it is true that the graduate job market has become more competitive as the number of graduate roles has failed to keep up with the growing supply of graduates. In the third quarter of 2017, 49 per cent of all recent graduates were working in non-graduate roles, representing an increase of 10 percentage points since 2001. The YouGov survey reported that 39 per cent of students stated that finding a job made university life more stressful, making it second highest cause of stress after study. In addition, for around 70 per cent of graduate employers, the minimum entry requirement is an upper second-class honours degree, placing further stress on students who may feel the pressure to achieve top marks if they want to succeed in the current market.

Stress alone is not diagnosable mental illness, but excessive, poorly managed, and prolonged stress can have a detrimental impact on psychological health and can subsequently lead to common mental health issues such as depression and anxiety.

The remaining stigma surrounding mental illness is important for universities to address. Worryingly, those who do not disclose may be more predisposed to suicide, as only 25 per cent of those who died by suicide were in touch with mental health facilities at the time of their death. The stigma surrounding mental health issues in men in particular should be addressed, since they are three times less likely to disclose a mental health issue but twice as likely to die by suicide than women.

The beginning of university is a time of transition for students, which can also be a barrier to them receiving mental health treatment. They often move away from home and leave behind their regular GP and support system, making it more difficult to receive consistent and timely care. University mental health advisors and other healthcare professionals reported that the biggest challenge facing student mental health is that 'the NHS is not set up to support students as they move between home and university.' Students are currently unable to register with two GPs. If they are already in contact with mental health services before starting at university, it may take a while for the student's notes and treatment plans to be transferred to a practice closer to where they study. In addition, when they return home, especially for longer periods of time over the summer, their notes and treatment plans are often inaccessible, raising significant issues for continuity of care.

Starting university can also coincide with the age at which many students would be transitioned from child to adult mental health services, which is typically age 18 but can vary by provider. Dr Jacqueline Cornish, NHS England's National Clinical Director for Children, Young People, and Transition to Adulthood, has admitted that, in general, transitions are 'poorly planned, poorly executed, and poorly experienced.' This presents a real risk that vulnerable young people will disengage or become lost during the process, which would create more problems for the continuity of care that they receive.

To make sure that young people receive the help they need, policymakers should address the barriers that prevent or disrupt treatment at a time where students are already vulnerable, especially given the new pressures faced as they transition into higher education.

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Prevalence of mental health issues within the student-aged population - Education Policy Institute

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With the rate of university student suicides rising over the last 10 years, mental health has become a topic of increasing focus in higher education.[1] This analysis examines the prevalence of mental health issues within the student-aged population, before exploring...Read more Prevalence of mental health issues within the student-aged population ›

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Ted Talk on how a change of structure in universities may eliminate pressures felt by students

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Mental Wellness and the University Student | Jordy Decker | TEDxUBCO

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How Neoliberalism is damaging your mental health

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How Neoliberalism is damaging your mental health

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There is a widespread perception that mental ill health is on the rise in the West, in tandem with a prolonged decline in collective well-being. The idea that there are social and economic causes behind this perceived decline is increasingly convincing, amid what has been termed the zombie economics and grinding austerity, which have followed the global financial crash.

In particular, there is growing concern that the conditions and effects of neoliberalism - the enervating whirl of relentless privatisation, spiralling inequality, withdrawal of basic state support and benefits, ever-increasing and pointless work demands, fake news, unemployment and precarious work - is partly to blame. Perhaps most wearying are the invasive yet distant commands from media, state institutions, advertisements, friends or employers to self-maximise, persevere, grab your slice of the diminishing pie, "because you are worth it" - although you must constantly prove it, every day.

In our work and leisure we are urged to feign permanent enthusiasm amid radically lowered expectations. Neoliberal newspeak hollows out the terminology of achievement, mandating boasts about personal "excellence" and "dedication" as actual possibilities for achievement diminish and work becomes stripped of meaning. At my institution, the cleaners' uniforms are emblazoned with inscriptions announcing that they deliver their work with "passion, professionalism and pride" - as if it were reasonable to demand "passion" from a cleaner on minimum wage whose workload has doubled since 2012.

'Free choice'

A colleague recently informed me that young children in Bermuda make amends for misbehaviour by intoning, "I want to make good choices". As criminologists Steve Hall, Simon Winlow and Craig Ancrum have explored, "choices" become life-or-death when a bad choice or two can turn you into an irremediable "loser". We are told that structural barriers to aspiration, achievement and contentment will melt away in our fantasy "choice" economy.

But this falsehood of "free choice" demotivates and depoliticises. In such a world, depression, anxiety, narcissism (the primitive defence of the infantile self against overwhelming attack) are entirely logical responses. It has been confirmed that neoliberal societies make their citizens physically as well as mentally sick; the effect is magnified the more unequal the society and the more unprotected its citizens from free-market "competitiveness".

Kamira/Shutterstock.com

Depression in this context may appear almost self-protective: an opt-out from an unwinnable set of continual competitions. The recent rise in diagnoses of mental illnesses and " developmental disorders" involving states of agitation and hyperstimulation is similarly interesting. In the case of ADHD, for example, a person's hyperactivity and distractibility render them officially "disordered" or even disabled, to the extent that they are supposedly unable to cope with a hyperstimulating, late-capitalist environment. Yet they are, in another sense, entirely in tune with an economy of non-stop distraction, in which attention is repeatedly grabbed at and financially exploited.

Self-measurement

Neoliberalised healthcare requires every patient (or rather, "client" of healthcare "services") to take responsibility for her own state or behaviour. Mental healthcare is therefore being reframed as a series of "outcomes" geared at measurable improvement which the "service user" must manage by themselves as far as possible. Access to psychiatric diagnosis and support from public health services (and also within private or employer-run occupational healthcare schemes) sometimes depends on completion of a mood or symptom diary using smartphone or Fitbit self-tracking techniques. And there may well be more punitive future consequences for failure to self-track, as employers and perhaps benefit agencies gain more power to command this sort of performance from workers.

This "mHealth" app " revolution" also shows us how mental illness and anxiety about mental health itself may be deftly commodified and financialised. Measurement apps like MoodGym are purchased by the UK's National Health Service for use with patients. As the patient self-monitors, she is persistently encouraged to demonstrate "recovery", regardless of long-term impairment. It is telling, too, that recovery is based on " fitness for work" since the worthwhile adult is engaged in work activity at all times.

This focus on work-readiness partially explains the relative paucity of children's mental health services in the UK, which are catastrophically low in beds and were among the first to be privatised.

estherpoon/Shutterstock.com

Care - or risk management?

Neoliberal states divest themselves of the costs of care by individualising and privatising care duties. People displaying troubling symptoms are divided into the "dangerous", against whom punitive or authoritarian containment methods may be used, and those left to cope with what resources they or their families have left.

The 1970s-80s saw the closure of the last asylums in the UK and the welcome end of long-term institutionalisation for thousands written off as "mad" and without rights to liberty. As the state also made significant savings through the transfer of patients back into "the community", the situation appeared win-win. But half a century after " care in the community" became the norm for most chronically ill patients, effective community treatment is stymied by slashed budgets, low staffing levels and morale. Systematically defunded NHS psychiatric services struggle to fulfil the legal burdens placed on them to provide basic care.

Increasingly, it is the police who handle "front-line" mental health crises in the UK. Prisons " warehouse" the mentally distressed. Meanwhile in US prisons "mental health" wards house suicidal or otherwise mentally or emotionally unstable prisoners, who are placed in special "suicide-proof" garments and cells, sometimes in prolonged isolation. Any pretence of care will ultimately recede in favour of protection against litigation in the prison context. " Suicide smocks " are now placed on patients who appear suicidal or psychotic on admission or during incarceration in many US states, and are worn even in court.

What ways, then, are there to resist these worrying trends? Black humour is one way to deal with systems which command "positivity" while simultaneously informing you at every stage that you are already a "loser". But collectivity of various kinds will be our best protector. As psychologist Paul Verhaeghe predicts, the age of the " utterly unrelieved individual " has (probably) reached its limit. What lies beyond the limit, particularly for those already broken or caught in the punitive grip of incarcerative "care", is less clear.

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How neoliberalism is damaging your mental health

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
There is a widespread perception that mental ill health is on the rise in the West, in tandem with a prolonged decline in collective well-being. The idea that there are social and economic causes behind this perceived decline is increasingly convincing, amid what has been termed the zombie economics and grinding austerity, which have followed the global financial crash.

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Education Secretary Calls For University Students to Do More For Students Struggling With Their Mental Health

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Education Secretary Calls For University Students to Do More For Students Struggling With Their Mental Health

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The education secretary is asking universities to do more for students struggling with their mental health, specifically when it comes to contacting their families if they are at risk of a crisis.

In a letter published ahead of a Universities UK (UKK) event taking place today, Damian Hinds calls for universities to be more proactive when it comes to sharing students' emergency contact details with their loved ones.

Pointing out that numerous university students experience a mixture of emotions, "many of whom will be leaving home for the first time", he writes that "ensuring they are supported a key challenge for the department and the higher education sector as a whole".

"Our universities are world leading in so many areas and I want them to be the best in the world for support and pastoral care as well," Hinds says. "Ensuring that universities get better at reaching out to family members if a student is struggling with mental health is a big step along the road to delivering that ambition.

"I want to build on the good work done in this area and encourage the sector to work together to find a clear way forward so young people can get the support they need to thrive in higher education."

The UUK conference is aiming to develop clear guidelines on how and when students' information should be shared with someone from their support network.

A recent HuffPost UK investigation revealed that just two of the UK's 20 top universities currently offer the option for parents to be contacted in the event of a student's mental health crisis.

Bristol and Exeter have "opt-in" data sharing policies allowing students the option of permitting universities to inform parents or guardians if their mental health causes concern.

But none of the other 20 top universities ask students about sharing information with parents as a matter of course, with many citing data protection laws as a reason.

HuffPost UK also found there is confusion over what constitutes an emergency requiring the disclosure of information, with some institutions saying such a situation must be "life or death", while others say there must be simply a "threat" to wellbeing.

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Education Secretary Tells Universities To Do More For Students Struggling With Their Mental Health

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The education secretary is asking universities to do more for students struggling with their mental health, specifically when it comes to contacting their families if they are at risk of a crisis. In a letter published ahead of a Universities UK (UKK) event taking place today, Damian Hinds calls for universities to be more proactive when it comes to sharing students' emergency contact details with their loved ones.

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bbc iplayer: students on the edge

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Students On The Edge - 6. Breakdowns On Campus

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University students struggling with serious mental illness film themselves.

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Universities may be fuelling the mental health crisis, leading psychiatrist warns 

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Universities may be fuelling the mental health crisis, leading psychiatrist warns 

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Alternative perspective that suggests universities are mindlessly throwing money at mental health initiatives for normal young adult emotions

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Universities may be fuelling the mental health crisis, the president of the Royal Society of Medicine has said, with many mistaking loneliness for depression.

Sir Simon Wessely, who is regius professor of psychiatry King's College London, warned that universities must not "over medicalise" the normal emotions of young adults.

He urged universities to stop aimlessly throwing money at mental health initiatives when "very few" have been tested, and some may even be making things worse.

"There are things that aren't disorders at all that students habitually get - exam stress, loneliness and so on - all of which can be problematic," said Prof Wessely told The Telegraph.

"But we shouldn't go round automatically saying 'Oh you have a psychiatric disorder, you need psychiatric or mental health or professional health'."

He said there is an "overwhelming mountain of research" to show that best way to protect against mental health problems is to draw on active social networks.

Having a group of friends who you can confide in is a "probably better" for students than seeking professional health as friends "don't involve the risk of maybe thinking you have a disorder when you don't".

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Universities may be fuelling the mental health crisis, leading psychiatrist warns

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Universities may be fuelling the mental health crisis, the president of the Royal Society of Medicine has said, with many mistaking loneliness for depression. Sir Simon Wessely, who is regius professor of psychiatry King's College London, warned that universities must not "over medicalise" the normal emotions of young adults.

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Mental health: why we're all sick under neoliberalism

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Mental health: why we're all sick under neoliberalism

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Discusses the author's personal mental health deterioration and how this is attributed to the neoliberal context in which we live

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You are in bed, sweating and trembling, dosed up on a selection of painkillers and herbal tranquillisers. Noises outside make you jump. Your heart beats frantically, furiously, unremittingly. You sleep for brief periods, twenty minutes, ten minutes. A police siren goes past and you wake up with a start, soaked in the physical outpouring of your own fear. The pattern repeats.

You try focusing on breathing but your stomach is a twisting, churning ball of nausea. Everything is dislocated; objects become hyper-real. You cry quietly, trying not to wake anyone, then uncontrollably, without knowing why.

For me, "mental health" is misnamed. An apparently mental sickness can be one of the most physical experiences there is. While the causes are often (but not always) situational, emotional, intellectual, the effects are felt throughout the body. The mind resides in the stomach, in the chest. You can't wish away anxiety or depression. You can't "put it to the back of your mind". You can't fight it. Who could win in a battle against their own mind?

Mental breakdown. It's an archaic term, possibly not a politically or medically correct one, but it's the only resonant term I've found so far to describe how I felt at the start of 2013. I was suicidal, and decided I would kill myself at the end of the month if things hadn't improved.

According to the World Health Organization, over 450 million people globally have a mental health issue. In the UK where I live, one in four adults has a diagnosable mental health "condition" during the course of a year. That's 25 per cent of the population. And yet mental health is something that most of us do not understand. We don't talk about it. Instead, we just hope it doesn't happen to us.

Ignoring the fact that everyone has mental health, the label is allocated only to those who are struggling. So good mental health becomes invisible: its causes - which might be to do with emotional, social and material privilege - go uninterrogated. In 1901 Seebohm Rowntree showed poverty was not the fault of the poor. Neoliberal governments since then have all but eradicated that insight.

As inequality increases under late capitalist patriarchy, driving people into poverty, abusive relationships, or otherwise helpless conditions - free market ideology says we deserve it. Nobody who is trying hard enough should need state support.

The only surprise is that more of us aren't sick.

Never-ending unemployment, living on £56.25 a week's Jobseeker's Allowance, moving back in with my parents, being left by a partner, struggling with gender identity, lacking community, feeling hopeless. These are experiences that many other people have had, particularly those of ' Generation Y', and many others have experienced far worse. I now know these events were catalysts for the emergence of deeper issues, rather than causes in themselves. But for whatever reasons, I crashed.

I gradually stopped being able to function normally. During the lowest times, I couldn't hear. I was so trapped in my own misery, other peoples' voices came to me as if from a distance, only vaguely intelligible. I stopped being able to eat. I threw up constantly, but with no food to bring up. Sleeping brought on intense fear. Drifting off for an hour wasn't worth it for the misery of waking up. I couldn't read or listen to music - while words floated meaninglessly, sounds carried too painful an emotional context. Even writing was impossible.

In lieu of being able to do anything else, I ruminated obsessively, constantly. Inhabiting an isolated, fantasy world, I had somehow become 18 again. The previous five years of my life, times of great growth, community-building, identity-discovering, were suddenly - in my mind - erased.

Over the next few weeks on Transformation, we will be running articles that question the links between the mental and the political, addressing questions of social and personal transformation. Mental health is not a mystery, nor is it something that happens to other people: it is as structural as it is individual.

The silence and social stigma around mental health is deliberate, the product of an institutional refusal to talk about the affective impact of socio-political conditions. Some people get depressed, or psychotic, we think, because of chemical imbalances or individual traumatic experiences. They're just lazy or making it up. We don't talk about austerity, poverty, demonisation of the unemployed - the politically-driven stigmatising of the least privileged groups of people - but is it any wonder we're unhappy?

Of course it feels like shit when you're holding down three zero-hours contracts, because that's all you can find, to pay two thirds of your wages to live in a mouldy box-room. In a desperate scrabble to deny institutionally-sanctioned disadvantage, corporations, media and politicians conspire to promulgate a reverse reality. Their privilege is justified, they say: the mentally unwell are just skivers, they draw their curtains and lie around in bed all day, most sickness or disability is a pretense used to fund drug habits.

Our shame is that we buy into this paradigm: the " hard working families" who, in clinging to the myth that misfortune stems from a lack of hard work, can feel justified kicking down against the less well off.

My mental breakdown was a dislocating, dysphoric time. Yet visits to the Jobcentre to sign on for my £56 a week remain etched into my mind. It epitomises everything that is wrong. Queues of miserable, disenfranchised people with holes in their shoes. Women fighting. Bored, frustrated workers patronising bored, frustrated teenagers. And the pointless bureaucracy of it all - going through the tickbox exercises to convince the person behind the desk that you deserve to be able to eat this week.

This is a politics in which labour market potential is all that makes a person worthwhile. Perhaps neoliberal government's greatest success has been to reconstitute "work" - however mundane, drudging or undignified - as an unquestionable public good, in place of community, compassion, or support.

And under this regime mental health is simply an economic function. The British NHS is light on helping to address problems, but trigger-happy on the medications. We need more productive workers, after all. Meds can be a lifesaver, but few seem to question doling out pills as a political default. As series contributor Michael Richmond points out, it is notable that NHS-provided therapy takes the form of a brief course of Cognitive Behavioural Therapy, also popular within businesses who want a sedate workforce, happily content to be overworked and underpaid.

While often helpful, talking therapies can also act as a process of depoliticizing pain. Broader politics are barred from the cool blue counselling room. In therapy, as with neoliberal ideology, families become the problem; we ignore the ways in which structural oppressions - capitalism, patriarchy, white supremacy - create misery. Family becomes harmful within a political context; structures are about individuals.

By substituting drugs or therapy for tackling underlying social hierarchies, governments and global pharma can conveniently avoid or dismantle the collective empathy that might at the same time undermine their rule.

The truth is that more fulfilling lives will emerge from radical political and social change, both in how we are governed and in how we learn to relate to each other.

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Mental health: why we're all sick under neoliberalism

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We don't understand mental health, allocating the label only to those who are struggling. So good mental health, and its political causes, become invisible. An introduction to Transformation's new series on the politics of mental health. Content warning: anxiety, suicidal thoughts.

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Universities outsource mental health services despite soaring demand

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Universities outsource mental health services despite soaring demand

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Universities have began outsourcing mental health counselling to alleviate 'financial pressure'

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Universities outsource mental health services despite soaring demand

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Critics say shifting counselling resources into 'wellbeing' is perverse and dangerous when depression and suicide among students are at worrying levels

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How neoliberalism is damaging your mental health

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How neoliberalism is damaging your mental health

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Looking at how the very nature of a neoliberal society can be detrimental to your mental health

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
There is a widespread perception that mental ill health is on the rise in the West, in tandem with a prolonged decline in collective well-being. The idea that there are social and economic causes behind this perceived decline is increasingly convincing, amid what has been termed the zombie economics and grinding austerity, which have followed the global financial crash.

In particular, there is growing concern that the conditions and effects of neoliberalism - the enervating whirl of relentless privatisation, spiralling inequality, withdrawal of basic state support and benefits, ever-increasing and pointless work demands, fake news, unemployment and precarious work - is partly to blame. Perhaps most wearying are the invasive yet distant commands from media, state institutions, advertisements, friends or employers to self-maximise, persevere, grab your slice of the diminishing pie, "because you are worth it" - although you must constantly prove it, every day.

In our work and leisure we are urged to feign permanent enthusiasm amid radically lowered expectations. Neoliberal newspeak hollows out the terminology of achievement, mandating boasts about personal "excellence" and "dedication" as actual possibilities for achievement diminish and work becomes stripped of meaning. At my institution, the cleaners' uniforms are emblazoned with inscriptions announcing that they deliver their work with "passion, professionalism and pride" - as if it were reasonable to demand "passion" from a cleaner on minimum wage whose workload has doubled since 2012.

'Free choice'

A colleague recently informed me that young children in Bermuda make amends for misbehaviour by intoning, "I want to make good choices". As criminologists Steve Hall, Simon Winlow and Craig Ancrum have explored, "choices" become life-or-death when a bad choice or two can turn you into an irremediable "loser". We are told that structural barriers to aspiration, achievement and contentment will melt away in our fantasy "choice" economy.

But this falsehood of "free choice" demotivates and depoliticises. In such a world, depression, anxiety, narcissism (the primitive defence of the infantile self against overwhelming attack) are entirely logical responses. It has been confirmed that neoliberal societies make their citizens physically as well as mentally sick; the effect is magnified the more unequal the society and the more unprotected its citizens from free-market "competitiveness".

Kamira/Shutterstock.com

Depression in this context may appear almost self-protective: an opt-out from an unwinnable set of continual competitions. The recent rise in diagnoses of mental illnesses and " developmental disorders" involving states of agitation and hyperstimulation is similarly interesting. In the case of ADHD, for example, a person's hyperactivity and distractibility render them officially "disordered" or even disabled, to the extent that they are supposedly unable to cope with a hyperstimulating, late-capitalist environment. Yet they are, in another sense, entirely in tune with an economy of non-stop distraction, in which attention is repeatedly grabbed at and financially exploited.

Self-measurement

Neoliberalised healthcare requires every patient (or rather, "client" of healthcare "services") to take responsibility for her own state or behaviour. Mental healthcare is therefore being reframed as a series of "outcomes" geared at measurable improvement which the "service user" must manage by themselves as far as possible. Access to psychiatric diagnosis and support from public health services (and also within private or employer-run occupational healthcare schemes) sometimes depends on completion of a mood or symptom diary using smartphone or Fitbit self-tracking techniques. And there may well be more punitive future consequences for failure to self-track, as employers and perhaps benefit agencies gain more power to command this sort of performance from workers.

This "mHealth" app " revolution" also shows us how mental illness and anxiety about mental health itself may be deftly commodified and financialised. Measurement apps like MoodGym are purchased by the UK's National Health Service for use with patients. As the patient self-monitors, she is persistently encouraged to demonstrate "recovery", regardless of long-term impairment. It is telling, too, that recovery is based on " fitness for work" since the worthwhile adult is engaged in work activity at all times.

This focus on work-readiness partially explains the relative paucity of children's mental health services in the UK, which are catastrophically low in beds and were among the first to be privatised.

estherpoon/Shutterstock.com

Care - or risk management?

Neoliberal states divest themselves of the costs of care by individualising and privatising care duties. People displaying troubling symptoms are divided into the "dangerous", against whom punitive or authoritarian containment methods may be used, and those left to cope with what resources they or their families have left.

The 1970s-80s saw the closure of the last asylums in the UK and the welcome end of long-term institutionalisation for thousands written off as "mad" and without rights to liberty. As the state also made significant savings through the transfer of patients back into "the community", the situation appeared win-win. But half a century after " care in the community" became the norm for most chronically ill patients, effective community treatment is stymied by slashed budgets, low staffing levels and morale. Systematically defunded NHS psychiatric services struggle to fulfil the legal burdens placed on them to provide basic care.

Increasingly, it is the police who handle "front-line" mental health crises in the UK. Prisons " warehouse" the mentally distressed. Meanwhile in US prisons "mental health" wards house suicidal or otherwise mentally or emotionally unstable prisoners, who are placed in special "suicide-proof" garments and cells, sometimes in prolonged isolation. Any pretence of care will ultimately recede in favour of protection against litigation in the prison context. " Suicide smocks " are now placed on patients who appear suicidal or psychotic on admission or during incarceration in many US states, and are worn even in court.

What ways, then, are there to resist these worrying trends? Black humour is one way to deal with systems which command "positivity" while simultaneously informing you at every stage that you are already a "loser". But collectivity of various kinds will be our best protector. As psychologist Paul Verhaeghe predicts, the age of the " utterly unrelieved individual " has (probably) reached its limit. What lies beyond the limit, particularly for those already broken or caught in the punitive grip of incarcerative "care", is less clear.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
How neoliberalism is damaging your mental health

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
There is a widespread perception that mental ill health is on the rise in the West, in tandem with a prolonged decline in collective well-being. The idea that there are social and economic causes behind this perceived decline is increasingly convincing, amid what has been termed the zombie economics and grinding austerity, which have followed the global financial crash.

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1 in 4 students have a mental health problem.

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1 in 4 students have a mental health problem.

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Reported that there is a rising number of students with mental health conditions and even higher amongst the LGBT community (45%)

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The study comes as separate research from the University of Southampton and Solent NHS Trust found that financial difficulties and worrying about debt at university increases the risk of mental health conditions such as depression and alcohol dependency among students.

Dr Thomas Richardson, who led the Community Mental Health Journal study, said that "coming to university can be a stressful and daunting time for young people and finances can cause a lot of worry.

He added that: "We might not be able to change how much debt students are in but we can work with them to help them manage their finances and worries about money in order to mitigate the impact of these worries on mental health."

According to today's research, study was the primary cause of stress among students. Seven in ten said that work from university was one of their main sources of stress, with finding a job after university (39 per cent) and family (35 per cent) also causing concern.

However, despite the high rate of mental health problems, only one in five students have made use of university mental health services, with nine in 10 having visited a counsellor.

Nicola Dandridge, chief executive of Universities UK, said that universities took the issue very seriously but added that: "The challenge for universities is to build on the support services and external links that exist already, enabling referral to the NHS where necessary."

"It is important to remember that university wellbeing services, however excellent, cannot replace the specialised care that the NHS provides for students with mental illnesses."
If you have been affected by mental health issues, contact the Samaritans on 116123

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One in four university students suffer from mental health problems

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The study comes as separate research from the University of Southampton and Solent NHS Trust found that financial difficulties and worrying about debt at university increases the risk of mental health conditions such as depression and alcohol dependency among students.

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I know this doesn't link to universities but i thought it was important, NHS are bring out mental health checks for new fathers which is very important considering the rise in male suicide and mental health conditions. It's a way for them to help themselves if they have a mental health condition but also to help their partners during the process of becoming a parent.

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NHS to introduce mental health checks for new fathers

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Health service in England to offer help for men whose partners experience health problems

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This is an article written by someone who suffered mental health difficulties throughout her term at university and speaks about how more needs to be done to prevent crises before they happen rather than waiting for them to happen before dealing with them.

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In the wake of the documented rise in student mental health rates, and on University Mental Health Day, I wanted to discuss my own experience of depression as a student, as well as share my thoughts about what universities should be doing to tackle this potentially devastating illness.

My story stretches back 20 years, when I began a degree in English at the University of Reading. With the understanding that I have now, there is no doubt that I began university life in a state of mild depression, which grew steadily worse over the three years that I spent there. It wasn't until I reached crisis point, just after I graduated, that I began to receive treatment. That process is ongoing. Sadly, much of the distress of that time could have been avoided had I been able to label and address this illness. As a teenager in the late 1990s, however, there was little discussion of mental health and certainly no awareness on my part that I was suffering from a clinical condition.

Unfortunately, left untreated, depression becomes a self-feeding illness. Like many people who suffer from the condition, I started to engage in behaviour that made it worse. I drank far more, slept more, and started to avoid new social situations. I smoked cannabis. I took less care of my physical health and spent more and more time absorbed by sad thoughts instead of living in the moment. Very often, I felt tearful, anxious and a sense of dread. I also started to experience minor compulsions and panic attacks.
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How to deal with homesickness at university
I did think of speaking to someone about it many times, but it was difficult to know who I should be speaking to and, if so, what it was I should be speaking about. One of the characteristics of a mood disorder is that you become less objective about your own situation, and less likely to do anything about it. As a young student with little experience of adult life, I began to accept these symptoms as a "normal" part of my existence.

If the bad news is that depression is often a recurring illness, the good news is that in most cases it can be effectively treated, and even prevented, with a combination of the right support and an understanding of how lifestyle can affect mental health. Initiatives such as University Mental Health Day, which challenge the stigma of mental illness and promote a culture of openness and discussion, are a significant step in the right direction. Especially when we consider that more than one in four students suffer from one kind of mental health problem or another.

There is no doubt in my mind that each institution should have its own well-developed strategy for emotional well-being in its student population, including a student counselling service, an anonymous helpline, a range of online self-help resources and even a student-staffed outreach programme.
Read more: What do student mental health services look like around the world?
Twenty years later I am encouraged to see this kind of provision at the University of Birmingham, where I am now a PhD student. But it is equally important that these services are well-advertised. Every single undergraduate should be aware of the counselling services available to them, as well as the circumstances in which these services can be accessed. In my case, it might have taken a single email, poster or lecture shout-out to have altered the course of my undergraduate life.

But I would like to see universities go much further than this. The current set-up is too much about responding to mental health crises, rather than preventing such emergencies in the first place. It is time that universities adopted a proactive approach; one which addresses the many challenges that we know students face.

I would like to see a course in mental well-being attached to every undergraduate programme. This course would be about raising mental health awareness, as well as sharing knowledge and developing the skills that enhance mental well-being. This needn't be an academic course, or an expensive one. To begin with, this might take the form of a self-contained online course in the student's first year at university, ideally supplemented by occasional workshops. Over time, as we begin to glean the benefits and collect feedback, the course could grow and develop.

Graduates will emerge from their degrees with a range of well-informed strategies for mental well-being, an understanding that will serve both the individual and the people around them as they enter the workplace and progress through their lives. No institution is better placed to provide this kind of holistic training for the mind, and no institution has more of an ethical obligation to do so.

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Universities must adopt a proactive approach to mental health

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In the wake of the documented rise in student mental health rates, and on University Mental Health Day, I wanted to discuss my own experience of depression as a student, as well as share my thoughts about what universities should be doing to tackle this potentially devastating illness.

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This blog talks about all different kinds of mental health problems from the perspectives of those who have experienced them themselves or those who want to help others.

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Leanne rights about being active for her mental health and ways in which you could become active for your mental health.

Keeping active is scientifically proven to make you feel happier, it releases endorphins, a chemical known to reduce stress. It's important for everybody to stay active, but it can be especially beneficial if you suffer from mental health problems.

If you aren't into cardio or weight training then you might prefer something a bit gentler, like yoga. It takes your mind off of everyday stresses as you focus on the positions, it relieves tense muscles and it gives you a work out. You can do it in the comfort of your own home if you don't feel like seeing anyone that day or you can bring it outside and relax with nature.

Being active is often thought as having to go to the gym, something that can be exceptionally daunting if you suffer with mental health problems. But it doesn't have to be like that. Being active can be anything, from dancing to your favourite heartbreak song in your room, to going for a long walk outside.

People at university don't often have the money for a gym membership, but a yoga mat will only set you back £10, and if you're doing it in your bedroom, heck, you don't even have to buy workout clothes.

For me, yoga is an important part in helping me manage my anxiety, I try to do 50 minutes, three times a week. It gives me the chance to focus on myself, my breathing and my body.

Something that rarely happens living in London. One of my favourite Youtuber's who teaches yoga is https://www.youtube.com/user/yogawithadriene there are different videos depending on your experience, and depending if you want to relax or go more hardcore. It's a great way to reflect on the day past, without interfering thoughts popping into your head.

So, if you're as lazy as I am, but you feel like you could benefit from moving your body a little bit, give yoga a go. Let me know in the comments how you keep active for your mental health, what works for you?

Find out more about University Mental Health Day 2017, watch or read more on our Active Mental Health stories page!

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Leanne rights about being active for her mental health and ways in which you could become active for your mental health. Keeping active is scientifically proven to make you feel happier, it releases endorphins, a chemical known to reduce stress.

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How neoliberalism is damaging your mental health

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How neoliberalism is damaging your mental health

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Interesting read on neoliberalism more generally and its impacts on mental well-being.

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There is a widespread perception that mental ill health is on the rise in the West, in tandem with a prolonged decline in collective well-being. The idea that there are social and economic causes behind this perceived decline is increasingly convincing, amid what has been termed the zombie economics and grinding austerity, which have followed the global financial crash.

In particular, there is growing concern that the conditions and effects of neoliberalism - the enervating whirl of relentless privatisation, spiralling inequality, withdrawal of basic state support and benefits, ever-increasing and pointless work demands, fake news, unemployment and precarious work - is partly to blame. Perhaps most wearying are the invasive yet distant commands from media, state institutions, advertisements, friends or employers to self-maximise, persevere, grab your slice of the diminishing pie, "because you are worth it" - although you must constantly prove it, every day.

In our work and leisure we are urged to feign permanent enthusiasm amid radically lowered expectations. Neoliberal newspeak hollows out the terminology of achievement, mandating boasts about personal "excellence" and "dedication" as actual possibilities for achievement diminish and work becomes stripped of meaning. At my institution, the cleaners' uniforms are emblazoned with inscriptions announcing that they deliver their work with "passion, professionalism and pride" - as if it were reasonable to demand "passion" from a cleaner on minimum wage whose workload has doubled since 2012.

'Free choice'

A colleague recently informed me that young children in Bermuda make amends for misbehaviour by intoning, "I want to make good choices". As criminologists Steve Hall, Simon Winlow and Craig Ancrum have explored, "choices" become life-or-death when a bad choice or two can turn you into an irremediable "loser". We are told that structural barriers to aspiration, achievement and contentment will melt away in our fantasy "choice" economy.

But this falsehood of "free choice" demotivates and depoliticises. In such a world, depression, anxiety, narcissism (the primitive defence of the infantile self against overwhelming attack) are entirely logical responses. It has been confirmed that neoliberal societies make their citizens physically as well as mentally sick; the effect is magnified the more unequal the society and the more unprotected its citizens from free-market "competitiveness".

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Depression in this context may appear almost self-protective: an opt-out from an unwinnable set of continual competitions. The recent rise in diagnoses of mental illnesses and " developmental disorders" involving states of agitation and hyperstimulation is similarly interesting. In the case of ADHD, for example, a person's hyperactivity and distractibility render them officially "disordered" or even disabled, to the extent that they are supposedly unable to cope with a hyperstimulating, late-capitalist environment. Yet they are, in another sense, entirely in tune with an economy of non-stop distraction, in which attention is repeatedly grabbed at and financially exploited.

Self-measurement

Neoliberalised healthcare requires every patient (or rather, "client" of healthcare "services") to take responsibility for her own state or behaviour. Mental healthcare is therefore being reframed as a series of "outcomes" geared at measurable improvement which the "service user" must manage by themselves as far as possible. Access to psychiatric diagnosis and support from public health services (and also within private or employer-run occupational healthcare schemes) sometimes depends on completion of a mood or symptom diary using smartphone or Fitbit self-tracking techniques. And there may well be more punitive future consequences for failure to self-track, as employers and perhaps benefit agencies gain more power to command this sort of performance from workers.

This "mHealth" app " revolution" also shows us how mental illness and anxiety about mental health itself may be deftly commodified and financialised. Measurement apps like MoodGym are purchased by the UK's National Health Service for use with patients. As the patient self-monitors, she is persistently encouraged to demonstrate "recovery", regardless of long-term impairment. It is telling, too, that recovery is based on " fitness for work" since the worthwhile adult is engaged in work activity at all times.

This focus on work-readiness partially explains the relative paucity of children's mental health services in the UK, which are catastrophically low in beds and were among the first to be privatised.

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Care - or risk management?

Neoliberal states divest themselves of the costs of care by individualising and privatising care duties. People displaying troubling symptoms are divided into the "dangerous", against whom punitive or authoritarian containment methods may be used, and those left to cope with what resources they or their families have left.

The 1970s-80s saw the closure of the last asylums in the UK and the welcome end of long-term institutionalisation for thousands written off as "mad" and without rights to liberty. As the state also made significant savings through the transfer of patients back into "the community", the situation appeared win-win. But half a century after " care in the community" became the norm for most chronically ill patients, effective community treatment is stymied by slashed budgets, low staffing levels and morale. Systematically defunded NHS psychiatric services struggle to fulfil the legal burdens placed on them to provide basic care.

Increasingly, it is the police who handle "front-line" mental health crises in the UK. Prisons " warehouse" the mentally distressed. Meanwhile in US prisons "mental health" wards house suicidal or otherwise mentally or emotionally unstable prisoners, who are placed in special "suicide-proof" garments and cells, sometimes in prolonged isolation. Any pretence of care will ultimately recede in favour of protection against litigation in the prison context. " Suicide smocks " are now placed on patients who appear suicidal or psychotic on admission or during incarceration in many US states, and are worn even in court.

What ways, then, are there to resist these worrying trends? Black humour is one way to deal with systems which command "positivity" while simultaneously informing you at every stage that you are already a "loser". But collectivity of various kinds will be our best protector. As psychologist Paul Verhaeghe predicts, the age of the " utterly unrelieved individual " has (probably) reached its limit. What lies beyond the limit, particularly for those already broken or caught in the punitive grip of incarcerative "care", is less clear.

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How neoliberalism is damaging your mental health

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There is a widespread perception that mental ill health is on the rise in the West, in tandem with a prolonged decline in collective well-being. The idea that there are social and economic causes behind this perceived decline is increasingly convincing, amid what has been termed the zombie economics and grinding austerity, which have followed the global financial crash.

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Student mental health support must improve, universities told

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Student mental health support must improve, universities told

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Recent BBC report outlining policy interventions - seeking to make mental health a priority in Higher Education.

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Universities are being told to "dramatically improve" support for students with mental health issues.

The government is announcing it will award a certificate of excellence to institutions which meet new standards of mental health care.

It also wants universities to give students an opt-in service for vice chancellors to contact parents.

This would mean if students find themselves in a mental health crisis their relatives can be alerted.

Earlier this week, the Office for National Statistics published data suggesting 95 students took their own lives in England and Wales in the 12 months to July last year.

Universities minister Sam Gyimah is to outline the criteria that institutions need to meet to gain the recognition and is urging them to sign on to the "best practice" charter.

It will reward institutions that show they are making student and staff mental health a priority, and have improved mental health and wellbeing outcomes.

Officials will be working with charity Student Minds, Office for Students, Universities UK and the NUS among others to draw up the charter.

Mr Gyimah said some universities are doing well, but there are others that "have a way to go".

"We want to make sure that every young person at university is better supported in the future, as far as their mental health and wellbeing is concerned," he said.

'They were very supportive'

Holly Moyse, 24, suffered from depression and an eating disorder which worsened when she started at the University of Derby four years ago.

"Things started to escalate because of it being such a big change in my life," she said.

"Moving from Birmingham to Derby... that pressure of making new friends - it just added to it and my health started to deteriorate."

Holly stopped socialising and became obsessive about her weight and exercise. She reached crisis point at the Christmas of her first term and made the university aware.

She was offered six counselling sessions and then it was suggested where she could follow up.

"I felt like I couldn't tell my friends, I felt like I couldn't tell my family about it. So I kept going down this slope of poor mental health," she said.

"I was feeling quite isolated at the time, mainly because I felt no-one understood what I was going through."

Holly eventually went to A&E, which passed her on to their mental health teams who provided help. She confided in a lecturer who, with her permission, made other staff aware of the extent of her problems.

"At that point my eating disorder was very serious. It was life-threatening. They were quite strong about the fact that I need to have an authorised break," she said.

"So when I came back the following September to restart my course again, they were very supportive.

"I got a mentor, who'd support me once a week for about two hours. Just talking about how I was feeling and also if I was struggling with any university work to make sure I kept up with that while recovering."

She will graduate this summer from the University of Derby, which is acting as a research partner to help develop the charter. It has implemented mandatory tailored classes on mental health wellbeing and trained its staff to spot signs of those in mental health crisis.

Mr Gyimah confirmed the government is also looking at how universities and NHS services can work more smoothly together to help students.

A Universities UK report earlier this year found some students risked "slipping through the gaps" due to a lack of co-ordination between the NHS and universities.

Student Minds CEO Rosie Tressler said: "Together we will transform the futures of the 2.3 million students that are in higher education, whilst equipping the doctors, teachers and business leaders of the future to continue the positive change in wider society."
If you are worried or need any advice on any of the topics discussed in this article, go to BBC Action Line.

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Universities told to improve mental health care

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Universities are being told to "dramatically improve" support for students with mental health issues. The government is announcing it will award a certificate of excellence to institutions which meet new standards of mental health care. It also wants universities to give students an opt-in service for vice chancellors to contact parents.

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My students have paid £9,000 and now they think they own me

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My students have paid £9,000 and now they think they own me

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Interesting article that describes of the consumer elements that have been introduced within higher education under neoliberalism.

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My students have paid £9,000 and now they think they own me

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The government has turned students into customers who have no respect for academics and refuse to work for their grades

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Universities have a suicide problem as students taking own lives overtakes general population

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Universities have a suicide problem as students taking own lives overtakes general population

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Student Suicides have risen dramatically in the past 10 years - huge issue that must be tackled

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Edward Pinkney, who co-authored the analysis, said: "Concerns about students' mental health have been increasing since the economic recession, but until now there has been no comprehensive analysis of UK student suicide data.

"This is the first time we can conclusively say that as far as suicide is concerned, there is a real problem in higher education."

The analysis took into account a rise in the number of students attending university, quashing theories that levels had increased because of higher numbers of students.

Sir Anthony Seldon, vice-chancellor of the University of Buckingham and a campaigner on student well-being, told the BBC: "Student suicide rates and emotional distress levels could be reduced at university if we acted differently.

"More support in transitions, better tutoring and early warning, more peer to peer support, an enhanced sense of belonging, would all enhance wellbeing and reduce risk.

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Universities have a suicide problem as students taking own lives overtakes general population

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Edward Pinkney, who co-authored the analysis, said: "Concerns about students' mental health have been increasing since the economic recession, but until now there has been no comprehensive analysis of UK student suicide data. "This is the first time we can conclusively say that as far as suicide is concerned, there is a real problem in higher education."

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It's time for universities to put student mental health first

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It's time for universities to put student mental health first

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Huge demand for mental health services within higher education.

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Over half a million people are preparing to make the transition to student life, now that the new academic year is upon us. Prospective students will be full of excitement, but for many it will also be a testing time. Universities already have plenty of initiatives to support their students in place - but they could be strengthened through a transition strategy that prioritises mental health and wellbeing.

With higher study costs and increasingly competitive job markets, there is greater pressure than ever on this year's new cohort of students. Our annual Student Experience survey shows that almost nine in 10 (87%) of first year students find it difficult to cope with social or academic aspects of university life. Students are unsure of what to expect, and a large proportion say that the transition from school to university is a source of considerable stress. The stress of studying is a key area in which students struggle, with almost six in 10 reporting that this made it difficult for them to cope. Other troubles that featured significantly included isolation (44%), balancing work and study (37%), financial difficulties (36%) and living independently (22%).

When we dig deeper into the data on coping with the transition to university, there is a notable gender imbalance. Female students find it particularly difficult to cope, with 91% reporting to have struggled with one or more of the above issues, compared to 82% of male students.

The stigma around mental health has thankfully diminished in recent years, which has perhaps led to higher rates of reporting. New Institute for Public Policy Research analysis found nearly five times as many students as 10 years ago disclosed a mental health condition to their university. This means demand for university mental health services is growing, and institutions will have to ensure they are equipped to deal with it.

Now is the time for universities to assess how the growing demand for mental health services can be met. The recent publication of Universities UK framework on mental health has highlighted the need for student mental health to be a strategic priority, embedded across all university activities. While the efforts made so far are considerable, mental health and wellbeing services in universities have for too long been seen as an add-on. Students must feel they are supported through the transitions and milestones of university life in a holistic way. There are many instances of best practice across the sector, but the requirement for collaboration cannot be understated.

Our own teams in student accommodation are trained to understand the pressures students face and recognise the signs of isolation, anxiety and depression to ensure that either we and/or the university can intervene, when required. We tested the effectiveness of this approach through a pilot project at Nottingham Trent, which resulted in a student mental health guidance pack (pdf) published earlier this year. The project underscored the need for collaboration and auditing across sectors; to improve the level of understanding about mental health across the whole university community, including accommodation teams; and to embed a sustainable and resourced strategic approach.

One policy initiative I would like to throw into the mix would see more universities adopt the formalisation of a pro vice-chancellor for transition. Were this more widespread, it could provide a still greater focus on guiding new students through the challenges of independent study and living.

Now that we have a framework that provides a step change in how universities can approach mental health provision, we should grab it with both hands. A more joined-up approach between the academic and social/residential elements of university is essential to this. While signposting of existing services must be improved, a wider understanding of the pressures students face is vital if we are to ensure that mental health provision meets their growing needs.

Join the higher education network for more comment, analysis and job opportunities, direct to your inbox. Follow us on Twitter @gdnhighered. And if you have an idea for a story, please read our guidelines and email your pitch to us at highereducationnetwork@theguardian.com. Looking for a higher education job? Or perhaps you need to recruit university staff? Take a look at Guardian Jobs, the higher education specialist

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It's time for universities to put student mental health support first | Jon Wakeford

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Over half a million people are preparing to make the transition to student life, now that the new academic year is upon us. Prospective students will be full of excitement, but for many it will also be a testing time.

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Three Minute Theory- What is Neoliberalism?

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Three Minute Theory- What is Neoliberalism?

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Extremely brief overview of what Neoliberalism is. While reading around this topic, I've found it a lot easier to watch videos explaining more complex/difficult concepts first, before diving into texts, as this gives me a surface-level understanding of the topic which makes the (often very dense and hard to get through!) economic texts easier to read.

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Three Minute Theory: What is Neoliberalism?

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Neoliberalism has brainwashed how we see ourselves

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Neoliberalism has brainwashed how we see ourselves

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Wonderful video on how our identities are shaped/influenced by neoliberalism, with lots of resources for further reading in the description of the video

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Neoliberalism has brainwashed how we see ourselves

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Fantastically written article about the concept of 'self care' in the context of neoliberalism, explores our need for validation in a 'free market'.

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Siegfried Kracauer, one of the eloquent theorists of pop-culture associated with the Frankfurt School, frowned upon the cinema with its velvet drapes and plush seats, calling it "distraction raised to the level of culture." In his dour view of things, the urban working masses were lulled into sitting in the dark and gawping at mesmeric light projections while sinister forces shifted the world under their feet. "In the streets of Berlin, one is struck by the momentary insight that someday all this will suddenly burst apart," he portended in 1926. The cinema still offers mental vacations from our existence of exploited labor, but capitalism's more evolved form, neoliberalism, has delivered another, more pernicious sedative to take the edge off: medicinal jargon. The language of self-improvement has shifted its focus slightly but notably from motivation ("Just Do It.") to amelioration ("radical empathy"). From the peppy Queer Eye reboot to Jordan B. Peterson's angry Twelve Rules for Life: An Antidote to Chaos -the subtitle speaks volumes-the parlance of reassurance is a flourishing industry. An array of Virgils to suit various tastes stands ready to talk us through the many circles of neoliberal capitalism.

It makes sense that hyped-up "you're OK" language circulates frantically at a time when the marketization of every aspect of our lives has pitted us against the rest of humanity-whether we're interviewing, at age four, for a spot in an élite preschool or trying to pick the best mutual funds for our retirement portfolios. And yet, this so-called logic of the free market runs counter to what we comprehend of human nature.

Belonging is an essential human need. (Fascists understand this basic fact; neoliberals don't.)

We crave hearing that we're alright, we're not alone, we're accepted in spite of our flaws. Belonging is an essential human need. (Fascists understand this basic fact; neoliberals don't.) Loneliness, it turns out, negatively affects not only our psychological well-being, but also our physical health. And yet we have apparently chosen, via liberal democracy, to live according to a system of social organization that requires us to be jumpy paranoids, suspicious of everyone and terrified of our own potential mistakes. Believers in capitalist liberal democracies may cluck at the over-the-top Maoist inquisitions devoted to revolutionary self-criticism, but our society encourages us to practice the same extravagant self-loathing, only privately. That's why America's vast therapeutic brain trust has steadily eradicated the language of solidarity and class consciousness, honed through collective struggle, and replaced it with exhortations to "do what you love" and "live your best life." Both aphorisms imply that what we're currently doing is not enough.

Given that we spend most of our waking hours in an alienated, desperate grind to obtain or maintain a life-sustaining job, blaming ourselves for every snag along the way, gospels of reassurance and self-care are precious cargo. We are denied the ability to seek comfort from colleagues, neighbors, or-heaven forbid-comrades, because neoliberalism has turned them into our competition. Instead, disaffected souls are relentlessly steered back into the thrall of a marketplace where we can access, individually, little hits of succor.

The American Jitters

The individual under neoliberalism is atomized, competitive, and above all, anxious. Indeed, as David Beer and others have pointed out, it's precisely the gnawing and ever-present sense of anxiety that serves as the neoliberal social order's psychic motive force. Only when we humans hold each other in paranoid suspicion does the so-called free market work. Only when we're constantly trying to scoop up each Postmates order or increase our average star rating (on Uber, Goodreads, it doesn't matter), does the all-important market function properly.

The star rating is a particularly ingenious means of sowing this anxiety. As we all learned in primary school, amounts are nonsense without units. Six, one half, eighty-seven thousand-these numbers do not mean anything unless we know what mutually agreed-upon unit they attach to: fortnights, teaspoons, furlongs, etc. But what is a star? Nobody knows. The star rating average is only meaningful in relative terms: it's higher or lower than the star ratings other striving workers earn. In other words, user reviews situate our performance not according to some stable benchmark-such as increased production per hour worked-but within an ever-fluctuating hierarchy comprised of our peers.

This all-too-public, shifting performance grid represents but one of many tools that keep the flow of anxiety humming along under neoliberalism. Others abound, and are now such a familiar feature of our working and emotional lives that we scarcely notice how routinely they derange our basic sense of self: there's the rollback of ongoing employment through the gig economy, the explosion of applications (LinkedIn, for instance, turns its users-even the employed ones-into constant job applicants), zero-sum performance assessments such as Barack Obama's Race to the Top, just-in-time shift scheduling, entrepreneurial kindergartens, and many more. All of these systems encourage us to view others' achievements as our own setbacks, to individualize completely all successes and disappointments.

America's vast therapeutic brain trust has steadily eradicated the language of solidarity and class consciousness, honed through collective struggle, and replaced it with exhortations to "do what you love" and "live your best life."

We are terrified to make even one tiny mistake, yet at the same time we are faced with a ruling class that makes little effort to hide its flagrant misdeeds: graft, corruption, and perhaps most appalling in our age of so-called meritocracy, sheer incompetence. Miss one parole meeting or court date and your life is plunged into an unending hell of punitive bureaucracy and inescapable debt. CIA deputy director Gina Haspel, on the other hand, violates the Constitution by running a secret torture cell, only to be rewarded with a promotion. Despite Hillary Clinton running a ham-fisted and bewilderingly tone-deaf campaign, we had the phrase "most qualified presidential candidate" practically shoved down our gullets. And, of course, Donald Trump is president.

As an individual office worker, you might be terrified that you mishandled one client account. You might spend sleepless nights agonizing that you might have bungled some bureaucratic subroutine that causes your client to complain to your boss. Should such a gruesome fate upend you, you'll lose your job, then your home, then you and your kids will be living out of your car, and they'll be condemned to a life of poverty. And it will have been all your fault. Then there's Wells Fargo CEO Tim Sloan, who helped to preside over the deliberately fraudulent creation of 1.5 million bank accounts and 565,000 credit cards with virtually zero consequences. Sure, he's publicly hated, but he's laughing all the way to the, ahem, bank. What's the board of Wells Fargo going to do, fire him? After it already paid him untold millions of dollars? Actually, they gave him a raise.

Well, so what? We all know that those at the top play by different rules, and that for most people, consequences can be wildly out of proportion to their blunders. At least under feudalism, this discrepancy was out in the open. Yes, it was unjust, but it also couldn't be denied. What's special about capitalism, and its neoliberal version in particular, is how most of us must accept that each and any of our individual missteps justifies all calamity that befalls us, no matter how ruinous. The location of all social problems onto individuals has now reached preposterous proportions. It used to be that people's hardships owed to their not studying hard enough or having a rap sheet for smoking weed in the 7-Eleven parking lot. Now, ordering avocado toast at brunch is the vice that justifiably closes someone out of the housing market forever. Meanwhile, today's glorified feudal lords continue committing fraud and torture-or just go on lying and bumbling their way into greater wealth and political glory.

Pabulum for Sale

But here's the truly wonderful thing about neoliberalism-as it turns us all into paranoid, jealous schemers, it offers to sell us bromides to ameliorate the very bad feelings of self-doubt and alienation it conjures in our dark nights of the soul. Neoliberalism has not only given us crippling anxiety, but also its apparent remedy. It is no coincidence that as we become more nervous, "wellness" and "self-care" have become mainstream industries. Over the last few decades, workplaces have become ever more oppressive, intensely tracking workers' bodies, demanding longer hours, and weakening workers' bargaining rights while also instituting wellness and mentoring programs on an ever greater scale.

Occasionally, the contradiction of punitive, intrusive "wellness" becomes too ridiculous to bear and cracks under its own weight. One oft-mentioned catalyst for the recent teacher strike in West Virginia was a proposal to mandate the monitoring of teachers' bodily movement via Fitbit just as the state government moved to limit pay raises and school funding. Capitalism will deplete you, while letting you think you have the means to improve your lot. Indeed, it will attempt to force its therapy on you. In the case of West Virginia's top-down Taylorist wellness crusade, the state authorities clearly overplayed their hand; far more common are employer-sponsored initiatives, whether packaged as mindfulness training or meditation classes, that have been inserted into our working lives to help us talk ourselves down. Mindfulness-a state of hyper-awareness tempered with disciplined calm-has become the corporate mantra du jour. By encouraging increasingly put-upon employees to assume tree poses or retreat into an om in the face of frustration, corporate overlords mean to head off any mutinous stirrings before they have a chance to gain momentum. Even if CEOs themselves occasionally adopt these regimes with apparent sincerity, mindfulness serves the companies' bottom lines first and foremost because it is fundamentally anti-revolutionary. "It's hard not to notice how often corporate mindfulness aligns seamlessly with layoffs," Laura Marsh writes. "Employees need a sense of calm too when their employer is flailing. Those productivity gains-an extra sixty-nine minutes of focus per employee per month-count for more when the ranks are thinning."

This mode of psychic self-instruction presents a revealing complement to the anti-union propaganda films that employers may-and frequently do-require workers to view. Silly as all this instructional media may seem, those who circulate it understand that it is worth the investment. They know that language matters. Nothing cuts off self-determination more efficiently than eradicating its language. Replacing it with misdirecting prattle that locates all blame as well as the possible redemption from it back onto the individual is a magnificent coup for those who would like to keep us wary of one another. Corporate feel-goodism has a sick way of twisting the grimmest instances of exploitation and desperation into tales of individual triumph. In 2016, Lyft elevated a nine-months pregnant driver and mentor into a position of corporate celebrity for accepting a fare during labor. Asking for similar "exciting" stories, Lyft cast its employee's story as one of positive enterprise. Like any other company, Lyft knows that workers brimming with good feelings are rarely motivated to organize and demand working conditions that don't require employees who are about to give birth to drive strangers around town.

It's also no coincidence that the politician who presided over the final triumph of neoliberalism as American social and economic common sense was Bill "I Feel Your Pain" Clinton. Clinton threw poor single mothers off of public assistance, but any cost-cutting pol can do that. Clinton's gift was that he could make even self-identified left-liberals feel good about such punitive policy shifts, by making it appear that they were in fact helping these women help themselves. In many ways, Clinton's sleight of hand encapsulates neatly the narcissistic feedback loop of neoliberal positivity, which focuses on what feels good, rather than what is gracious and just.

Condition Blue

Such withdrawal into the self was on display by the Clinton political project just after Hillary's 2016 loss to Donald Trump. As the careening emergency that is the Trump presidency was set into motion, Hillary Clinton embarked on a self-care regimen of walks in the woods and alternate nostril breathing. Still, dwelling on her alone leads us into the very trap of individualizing social problems that we should avoid-Hillary was hardly the only person who felt the impulse to check out and focus on personal recovery after the election. All variety of people pledged to abandon all news media and leave the country in order to nurse their wounds and turn their attention toward self-discovery. Particularly revealing are the remarks of one voluntary exile from Trump's America traveling across Asia with her family: "I try not to engage . . . We're here to be students, and not talk about terrible things." Such reactions are perhaps sympathetic, but politically, yoga retreats, news blackouts, and glasses of chardonnay only deliver would-be reformers into dead ends.

Two decades after the Clinton White House's neoliberal reign, the same navel-gazing dynamic operates deep within our social media feeds. The main benefit of social media, according to Mark Zuckerberg, is that it provides the infrastructure to "bring the world closer together." Through platforms like Facebook and Facebook-owned Instagram, we can interact more often with more people, and across greater geographical distances than ever before. Nevertheless, thanks to the atomistic social arrangements that dominate the rest of our lives, people tend to dwell mostly within their own little cliques, reinforcing their previously held notions of good politics, taste, etc.

More alarming however, is what might be termed the paradox of neoliberal social retreat: although people gravitate to social media in order to feel connected, social media, and Instagram in particular, has a tendency to make people feel worse about themselves. Instagram's genius in distributing bad feelings across a vast social network is particularly revealing, as Instagram is typically considered to be the most upbeat social-media venue on offer-not the platform of massive owns and pile-ons. Indeed, the Instagram platform is host to a large crew of wildly popular posters of positive and reassuring content, such as pretty food and easily digestible poetry.

Neoliberalism has not only given us crippling anxiety, but also its apparent remedy.

However, it turns out that this kind of content tends to make viewers feel alienated-by the ever-competitive logic of capitalist emotional display, even the feel-good content featured on Instagram breeds a perverse sort of invidious malaise, with each new post about an excellent meal leaving a powerful residual sense that the onlookers' own lives are acutely lacking in the material to generate similarly celebratory posts. And yet, in another brilliant stroke of cloistral neoliberal mood marketing, the feelings of insufficiency that Instagram fosters in many of its users are exactly what make Instagram positivity all the more appealing to them. Feeling blue? Why not scroll through some non-challenging four-line poems and a pleasing table setting?

Anxiety, and especially depression, as the late social critic Mark Fisher noted, often have social causes, but we are led to believe that we suffer individually and must struggle alone. Fisher's point is that we are prevented from even considering such conditions as social. The treatments on offer, the most common ways to discuss recovery-therapy and pharmaceuticals-are essentially solo journeys that patients undertake. Against this hyper-individualist vision of psychic healing, we do well to highlight Fisher's core insight that the tools we are given skew how we understand the world and our place in it. Language, typically the most essential method by which we articulate our affective life, can be a most insidious means of our own oppression if co-opted by those who would exploit us.

There is a reason why re-emergent words and phrases like "solidarity," "class consciousness," "mass movement," "organize," and "collective struggle," sound old-fashioned and in need of a good dusting-off. They didn't simply fall out of vogue; they were aggressively obsolesced in our everyday lives by a variety of interests-employers, corporations hungrily eyeing public assets-determined to alienate us from each other in the interest in marketizing our souls for their own benefit. In return, they bestowed to us a self-oriented language of supposed care, that was never really meant to liberate us from the sources of our anxiety and depression. It's only there to blunt the pain temporarily-long enough to enable us to move on to the next TaskRabbit assignment, Uber client, or briskly managed election cycle.

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Tell Me It's Going to be OK | Miya Tokumitsu

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Siegfried Kracauer, one of the eloquent theorists of pop-culture associated with the Frankfurt School, frowned upon the cinema with its velvet drapes and plush seats, calling it "distraction raised to the level of culture." In his dour view of things, the urban working masses were lulled into sitting in the dark and gawping at mesmeric light projections while sinister forces shifted the world under their feet.

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Mindfulness is just Buddhism sold to you by Neoliberals

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Mindfulness is just Buddhism sold to you by Neoliberals

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Article on mindfulness and capitalism

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Mindfulness is big business, worth in excess of $1bn (£7.2m) in the US alone and linked - somewhat paradoxically - to an expanding range of must-have products. These include downloadable apps (1,300 at the last count), books to read or colour in and online courses. Mindfulness practice and training is now part of a global wellness industry worth trillions of dollars.

Mindfulness has its origins in Buddhist meditation teachings and encourages the quiet observation of habituated thought patterns and emotions. The aim is to interrupt what can be an unhealthy tendency to over-identify with and stress out about these transient contents of the mind. By doing so, those who practice mindfulness can come to dwell in what is often described as a more "spacious" and liberating awareness. They are freed from seemingly automatic tendencies (such as anxiety about status, appearances, future prospects, productivity) that are exploited by advertisers and other institutions in order to shape our behaviour. In its original Buddhist settings, mindfulness is inseparable from the ethical life.

The rapid rise and mainstreaming of what was once regarded as the preserve of a 1960s counterculture associated with a rejection of materialist values might seem surprising. But it is no accident that these practices of meditation and mindfulness have become so widespread. Neoliberalism and the associated rise of the "attention economy" are signs of our consumerist and enterprising times. Corporations and dominant institutions thrive by capturing and directing our time and attention, both of which appear to be in ever shorter supply.
The attention economy
The celebrated French activist, philosopher and psychotherapist Félix Guattari observed some time ago that contemporary capitalism had begun to determine who we think we are. The power of corporate media, advertising, video games, Hollywood and the rise of social media condition how we present and think about ourselves. And in turn, our visions of ourselves participate in the production of all other commodities.

As we have come to identify with our lives as consumers, our lives have been reduced to an infinite series of choices and transactions. At the same time, our relationships with a once flourishing biodiversity - both natural and cultural - atrophy and recede behind a series of screens, preserved only as a televisual spectacle to salve our blighted collective sense of unease.

So there is a great deal at stake for companies competing to commodify and colonise our attention. We are no longer mere consumers captured by chance by skillful marketing. We have become subjects and products formed in the interplay of algorithms, technology and newly minted corporate tools that mine our relationships, tastes, moods and intimate preferences. These are then fed back into the system in a perfect loop on platforms developed by Facebook, Apple, Netflix and a host of others now busily turning our attention into a tradeable commodity.

But as our enclosure in this attention economy accelerates, our vulnerability to addiction, loneliness, depression and alienation is entrenched. The more we buy into a disenchanted world bereft of complexity, care and meaning, nature and other people appear to retreat behind a series of screens.
McMindfulness
Meanwhile mindfulness, a practice with its roots in Buddhism, has mushroomed in popularity. This may seem odd. But the popular, secular variety of "mindfulness" - or "McMindfulness", as it has been dubbed - can appear to offer a tailored, therapeutic response to many of the features of contemporary neoliberalism and the demands of the attention economy.

Indeed, mindfulness-based practices are merging with the neoliberal logic of "self care". They seem to be consistent with the imperative that we increasingly take responsibility for our own individual fates as they are set adrift from community. This is a logic that has become pervasive across our public and private institutions, where "self regulation" in pursuit of resilience is the new watchword. Adapt - or perish.

And so mindfulness is being sold as a respite from hyperconsumerism, or as support for our struggle to comply with pressures to enhance productivity in the workplace. It is being used, for example, as a form of self-discipline in the service of enhanced productivity in corporate and institutional settings. Equally, the practice is being deployed by institutions to help mitigate consequences at heightened moments of distress such as when staff are being prepared to adapt to news of their imminent redundancy.
Back to Buddhism?
So-called secular therapeutic mindfulness practices, then, can operate on the same register as neoliberalism and the "attention economy". That's why the philosopher Slavoj Žižek once described Buddhism as the perfect supplement for a consumerist society. Žižek was only half right. The real problem is the selective appropriation of Buddhist practices, stripped of their ethical and philosophical insights. As a result, mindfulness practices are too often presented and taught without adequate acknowledgement of the power structures that are themselves an important source of our distress.

Buddhist scholarship differentiates between "right mindfulness" and "wrong mindfulness". Mindfulness must be practised with attention to the operation of power and context if it is to generate useful and liberating insights. It is irreducible to exclusively personal or individual experience. Rather, it must be practised as a gateway to an ethics of care and community - the "mindful commons". As the philosopher of care María Puig de la Bellacasa reminds us, all knowledge is situated: knowing and thinking are inconceivable without attention to relations. These including relations of power, which can bear down on and move through our bodies, minds and places, influencing the way we think.

Stripped of its ethical and contextual roots, mindfulness-based practices borrowed from Buddhist and Zen lineages risk shoring up the very sources of suffering from which the Buddha set out to liberate himself and others. But practised correctly, mindfulness - aligned with and informed by acknowledgement of powerful institutional sources of suffering - can be a pathway to critical engagement and resistance.
Peter Doran is a lecturer in law at Queen's University Belfast. This article first appeared on The Conversation (theconversation.com)

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Let's take mindfulness back to its Buddhist roots

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Mindfulness is big business, worth in excess of $1bn (£7.2m) in the US alone and linked - somewhat paradoxically - to an expanding range of must-have products. These include downloadable apps (1,300 at the last count), books to read or colour in and online courses.

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Interesting interview regarding student mental health and whether parents should be contacted by the university in crisis situations, something that is being proposed.

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BBC Radio 4 - Woman's Hour, Women and fabric, Student mental health, Homelessness, Plastic-free periods

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Women and the history of fabric. Students and mental health. Plastic-free periods.