Student Mental Health. A key phrase that we hear so regularly. We support students with so much more than their mental health – we are non-judgemental, we provide information, and we provide that listening ear when students want to be heard.
This week we’ve been hearing from the Higher Education Mental Health Taskforce that some institutions send results out to students at midnight, when no student-specific services except Nightline are open and available, and when students are already at their most vulnerable. This is precisely why we’re needed. Institutions may change their practices, and we hope they do, so that students have a variety of support available to them in those hard times. However, it’s the co-creation of support that research shows is most valuable to students. The anonymity and opportunity to talk without impacting their studies in any way is what makes Nightline special.
In my first few months with Nightline Association, I have been amazed at how big this sector is, yet how quiet a voice we’ve had. As we start to feed in to the national picture of student mental health, and have more conversations with peers on the Mental Wellbeing in Higher Education Expert Group, and with other mental health charities supported by the brilliant funder, Nominet, we realise how much impact our work can have; not only in terms of supporting students each night of term on the end of the phone or message, but also looking more holistically at challenges students are facing, identifying when there are spikes in calls and what they might correlate to.
Will you join us as we look to support more students? Will you join us as we use our collective voice to share the biggest challenges facing students right now? With more listening ears, with more Nightlines, we can support more students when other services aren’t open, when students are at their most vulnerable.
We hope to start up newsletters before too long, but in the meantime if you want to talk about how you can support us, please do email us on enquiries@nightline.ac.uk and Hannah or I will come back to you.
Thank you.
~ Katie
