We're not OK

  I wasn’t planning to write any more about my experiences and views on depression however since my last post here, on the same issue, it was brought to my attention that there is been more I wish to say but, thanks to my dissertation and some plays, I’ve not been able to get round to voicing my opinions until now. I feel it is important to note that these views are, as always, my own and my knowledge of the counselling services for students is predominantly, if not almost entirely, limited to my own university.

  I read an article on a newspaper’s website about a week after my last post which told the sad story of a girl at another university who, having suffered from depression for a while, had taken her own life. What the article mentioned was the distinct lack by her university to provide proper and consistent psychological care which her parents saw as partially to blame for her death. While searching for this article again, I realised this had happened fifteen years ago. However, this is something I also have experienced myself at my own university in the past year and I am not alone amongst those I know who I believe have also been let down. This seems to me to show that in the past fifteen years little has changed and, in my opinion, it is just not good enough. In fact, it’s pretty awful.

  When I applied to my university’s counselling services last September I was shocked and rather appalled at the fact that they only provided with the average student looking for support with six fifty minute sessions of one-on-one counselling before leaving you to face the option of ‘group’ or paying for counselling outside of the university. The rare exceptions to this, I later found out, required an overdose, suicide attempt or some kind of hospital admittance. Well, at least there’s that. I guess. But honestly, how can they think this is good enough? I saw somebody for a total of five hours, the first three of which it took me to start really talking about some of the more painful things I was experiencing. And then, after six weeks/five hours, I was given the option of going to a ‘group’ on campus or, what was recommended as best for me, going to somebody else for one-on-one sessions at a private clinic. I joked about it with my friends, ‘oh you may be suicidal but your time’s up, we don’t want to deal with your issues, bye now!’.

  Now, admittedly, to my memory, I don’t think I ever owned up to my depression being quite that bad but, as it says in the song I’m listening to while writing this, Pills by The Perishers, ‘one may think we’re alright but we need pills to sleep at night, we need lies to make it through the day, we’re not ok’. I want to lay particular stress upon the words one may think we’re alright but we need lies to make it through the day, we’re not ok. We, those suffering from depression, are not ok, even if we say we are. And if somebody has taken the incredibly brave decision to go seek help, how on earth does it make sense to turn them away after five weeks because they haven’t actually harmed themselves…yet. Yet. Or to the counsellor’s knowledge. I mean, they’re hardly going to own up to it only knowing somebody for a maximum of five hours.

  As I write this, I am getting more and more angry because I feel like not only I but my friends and peers have been let down and future students will be. One of my friends, finding it difficult to open up about their deepest issues, was told by their counsellor that they didn’t need to come back after only three sessions. Of course, after being told that, my friend was hardly going to say ‘well actually, there’s this’ if they didn’t feel they were truly welcome and supported and as if they weren’t a burden or as if they belonged there. As well as this, when you’re starting out counselling knowing that somebody is only going to listen to you for such a minimal time, you don’t exactly feel like you have your counsellor’s total attention and support to begin with, let alone if they want to turf you out before your six sessions are even up.

  I know there are many students going to the university and, as 1/3 students suffers from depression at some point while at University, there’s bound to be a lot of people to deal with. That’s why the services are this way. But it is also why the services are here to begin with. Counselling should not become something debased to numbers, ‘one in, one out, keep the line moving’, but it has, at my University at least and, at least in the past if not still now (I don’t know either way), at others too. I don’t know which department of the university or NHS or government or whatever/whoever is responsible for this but they are letting students down. I just hope that at some point, soon, very soon, this changes.