Mental health: don’t suffer in silence
With World Mental Health Day on October 10th 2008, Aisling Tempany investigates how mental health issues affect students
Every pop star, actor and politician seems to have an eating disorder, be experiencing a nervous breakdown or suffer from some variation of depression that seems to be the cool new thing. But it’s so much more complicated than that. When are you mentally healthy? When are you not? Who’s ill and who’s just weird? Is everyone ‘attention-seeking’? Are they just ‘being silly’? The chances are, if you’ve ever had, or have, a mental health problem, you’ve heard all these things.
University is, for everyone just starting in their first year, one of the first big moments of change in your life. Even if you’re a 33 year-old mature student or postgraduate who has been working for a few years, it’s still a massive change. Naturally, changes in lifestyle affect how you think and behave. And changes in how you think and behave directly influence your mental health. All this makes students one of the most vulnerable social groups for mental illness, with depression and eating disorders being the most common.
Come Out to Play
October 11 is National Coming Out Day. Nia Thomas and Alice Jones share their experiences of coming out at university...
For me the hardest thing about coming out was fear: fear of rejection, fear of non-acceptance, fear that my friends would no longer like me. When you’ve known your friends from the age of 3 the thought of potentially losing them is quite daunting.
So to finally get the courage to say, hey you know what, I like girls, was quite hard for me.
Heaven knows you're employable now
Looking for a job but can't find a job? Jamie Thunder looks at your options for earning a bit of extra cash as you study
It’s hard to be a student. You never have any money, you see. Well, you do. But somehow that never seems to last you for your first year. So what do you do? Eat the ice from your freezer for sustenance? Raid Cathays’ bin bags on a Tuesday nights?
No. You get a job. At the start of the year it’s an unappealing idea; everything’s hectic and it seems like your life is comprised entirely of lectures, nights out and sleep. And you don’t want to work. You’re doing work in your lectures, so why do any in your free time?
About gair rhydd
Search
Atom RSS Feeds
