Passed: March 2021 (16th)

What do you want? / Why do you want it? 

The Student Counselling & Wellbeing Service provides counselling and psychotherapy services to students who are struggling with mental health issues. This is a free service provided to struggling students with a maximum of four sessions per academic year. Psychotherapists can help address the underlying causes of students’ problems as well as providing psychological interventions to students. This is very helpful as students will have the opportunity for disclosing private matters to an individual and receiving specialists help if needed.

Since last year, many students have been facing a number of life challenges caused by the COVID-19 pandemic. These events are likely to have continuous, detrimental effects on students’ wellbeing. This may be due to the change of students’ learning experience adding concerns about their academic developments. In addition to the impact of stress and social isolation, students are more likely to experience anxiety, depression, and emotional distress. It means that students may require more than four sessions per academic year to cope with ongoing, stressful circumstances.

During this difficult period of time, a number of students already reported having consistent emotional distress triggered by remote learning and life events. Students are now in a very vulnerable state, and have high risks of developing mental health disorders if not receiving appropriate psychological support to adapt to this unusual students’ life. Hence, it is imperative that the university should increase funds to the mental wellbeing department and provide more therapeutic services to struggling students.