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Counselling, Health and Well-being Service: Feeling down?

13 July 2015

Feeling down is something that many students & graduates may experience. The Cardiff Universities Counselling, Health and Well-being service gave me a lot of information to share to all you students and graduates, and because the topic of mental health is so important I couldn’t do just one blog post – so there will be more to come! 

The Counselling, Health and Well-being service has had 1,510 students apply to their services this year alone. They measure these statistics from the start of September to the beginning of August – although during the summer referrals lessen these statistics are set to increase.

The Counselling, Health and Well-being service offer ‘Walk-In’ sessions to all students. They have had a total of 750 students come to these sessions since 2014.

I asked the team, “What does a ‘Walk-In’ session entail?“. They explained to me that “The Walk-in times are made up of 10-15 minute appointments and the aim of these are to give students support, advice, information, resources and signposting to appropriate services. This is often a space for students to get a taster of what we do and can be an opportunity to meet some of the Counselling, Health and Wellbeing staff before they apply to us.”

The service also runs a Workshop Programme which I was told “students can sign up for, without being referred to the service”. This programme has been used by 45o students since the academic year 2014-15.

Following on from these statistics I wanted to know how important the service thinks it is for students and graduates to take time out from the stresses of exams, study and job hunting?

They went on to explain that they, “like to encourage students to find a balance that works for them. Every student is slightly different and when we are giving advice we try to encourage students to closely monitor their stress levels in order to make decisions about how much time they dedicate to specific tasks.”.

Tips:

  1. Make time for yourself around your studies, job-hunting and extra-curricular activities.
  2. Prioritise the ‘basics’ of your routine. For example your sleep pattern, healthy eating and regular excercise!
  3. Schedule in breaks – these help you to re-energise and re-focus!
  4. Quality not Quantity – when studying/job-hunting make sure you spend shorter amounts of time doing quality work, not burning yourself out!
  5. Mindfulness – take a minute to yourself, close your eyes and focus on your breathing and posture. This can help to de-stress you and improve your focus.
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Hopefully this advice will be helpful to all you Cardiff University students and graduates! Expect some more posts with advice available over the next few days!

Meaghan x