IN 1998, two professional psychologists revealed that one in three female Oxford students had suffered from some form of eating disorder.
Following a spate of Oxford suicides in the 1990s, the same study found that 31 per cent of male and 35 per cent of female students had also contemplated suicide at some point in their lives. Our survey, together with recent high-profile suicides like Balliol JCR President Andrew Mason in February 2007, suggests that these problems continue to persist. But it would be wrong to simply place blame where it seems most obvious – the University and the Student Union’s welfare provision. You wont find too many sufferers haunted by the handling of their case after they finally sought help; most focus on the causes of their daily suffering.
Discussing the manifold stresses that affect Oxford students here would be gratuitous, but it is worth pointing out that multiple small problems can quickly build into major, psychologically damaging episodes if left untreated. The University, and OUSU in particular, already work tirelessly to combat these difficulties, but welfare provision is strained to the limit. Despite all its good intentions, the Student Advice Service simply doesn’t have resources adequate for fighting a battle that requires attacks at the roots of a system. OUSU is a positive force for welfare, but the problem lies with the University and its outright refusal to award it a larger block grant to be spent there.
The reasons that the University give for this are well-rehearsed. A central student union doesn’t need more money when individual common rooms exist; the University’s own resources are perfectly good for looking after students. But the nature of eating disorders means that, in this particular case, generalized University welfare rarely works. Anorexia and bulimia are forms of control and are fuelled by an addiction to secrecy. Most cases will never come to light unless the situation is betrayed by a fellow student, and most would feel more comfortable doing so to a well-known college figure than an anonymous University service. This is why University provision, no matter how well-funded, can never match the equality of situation offered by student welfare officers.
Nevertheless, common room welfare officers are only a first point of call, and simply do not have the training or resources to be able to deal with complex psychological issues. As Trinity JCR showed when it disaffiliated from OUSU last summer, many have failed to appreciate this fact. Fortunately, even students from disaffiliated common rooms can rely on the OUSU safety net.
But too few suffering students are making use of what welfare is available. Is that because facilities are swamped and that anyone who calls in distress is put to the back of a very long queue? More likely is that Oxford itself is to blame: a culture of hard work and silence about something that might ruin a social reputation, a feeling that it isn’t the ‘done thing’ to make a fuss about something as intangible as a mind in crisis. Sell and Robson suggested that seventy per cent of sufferers held life at Oxford at least partially to blame for their eating disorder, and nine years later little seems to have changed.
So what is to be done: halving the workload and preventing anyone from dangerously isolating themselves while at Oxford? It seems implausible, but for the University to grant the Student Union more funding for welfare seems equally unlikely to happen.
