CN: mental health, suicide
The mental health of graduate students is frighteningly poor. In a recent survey done at the University of Berkeley, it was reported that 50 per cent of reported suicide attempts were of STEM graduate students. For many, it has become an accepted part of joining the academey. Students are dismissed – and often punished – for being ill, or wanting to have some time off for a holiday, to recharge their batteries. From within my own department, Chemistry, I have heard stories so horrific that they border on unbelievable.
For students who don’t have the fortune of a research group to fall back on (and even for some of those who do), completing a research degree can mean facing long periods of isolation, with little or no support. If they’re lucky, they might have a great supervisor, who they see more frequently than once a month. However, for the majority of students, this is not the case. Add this to the concerted shutdown that Oxford undergoes during holiday periods, and the lack of accountability of college advisors, and you have a recipe for disaster. For international students like me who cannot go home for Christmas, it can be an exceptionally lonely and isolating time. The counselling service even shuts down over the breaks, leaving struggling students to manage by themselves. This is not just about graduates, either: for undergraduate international students who face exorbitant fees, going home is simply not an option. Further, many final year undergraduates have to be here outside of term time to do research, or to prepare for finals. Never mind the culture shock you face when you arrive. Getting a degree from Oxford is a gruelling process, and one that the University is not adequately addressing.
I’m writing this as someone who has battled depression for ten years, and almost didn’t survive my degree because of the lack of signposting, the confusing UK health system, and absence of institutional support. It took me six weeks to get something that resembled healthcare, by which time I was severely ill.
Oxford University Student Union needs to be on the frontline of this battle – we have good relationships with the Collegiate University, the Counselling Service, and local services. This is why it’s not good enough to focus purely on extending term lengths, introducing reading weeks, or workload caps as solutions to the mental health crisis we are facing at this and every University. Aside from the fact that these will take years to implement, they are ideas that will either have negligible, or in some cases, negative impacts, upon the graduates that make up 47 per cent of the student population. You can’t cap a DPhil workload, and you can’t extend what is essentially a full time job without cutting into the little holiday we are given. We have to think about the wider implications of these policies in much more detail, and consider the effect they will have on all students, financially and materially as well as in terms of wellbeing.
We need to have a serious, well-thought-out conversation about what comes next. We need support for students for the whole time they’re here, and a better way of reaching them – many graduates do not interact with their Colleges at all, and so addressing welfare provision in departments is critical. We need to signpost the NHS Services better, and make the University or College provision that does exist less variable. There are tangible ways of effecting change, that are achievable, and that will make a huge difference to the life of every student.
In short, we need a plan – a vision – for how welfare works at Oxford, made by all of the people who will be affected by it. OUSU has a duty to represent and work on behalf of every student at Oxford, and to provide support for all those in need of it. Currently, that’s not happening. A welfare vision would allow OUSU to set clear priorities for the next few years, so that we keep pushing the University to make change where we as a student body want it most. I don’t need any more empty platitudes about not being ill at Oxford. I am ill, I am at Oxford, and I deserve to be here and to be heard, as does every other student, undergrad or grad, wherever you’re from. We are accountable to every student – it’s time that all our needs are put in the frame.
