Newcastle is the second worst uni in the UK at dealing with mental health

Newcastle University has come 29th out of 30 universities in The Tab’s inaugural 2016 Mental Health Rankings.

Newcastle’s ranking is partly a result of poor student satisfaction – just 36 per cent of students who told the university that they had a mental health problem said they had found it had helped them – but is mostly down to poor funding of the counselling service. 

Newcastle had the second worst overall financial scores, which measure how much funding the counselling service gets, and had the worst score for funding related to how many people have applied to the service. This is due to the massive spike in applications for the service over the past three years. In 2012/13, just over 1,000 students applied – last year, 2,803 applied, and funding simply hasn’t kept up.

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The Tab’s 2016 Mental Health Rankings are the first ever attempt to judge universities on how they treat mental health, with the aim to improve standards nationally, reward good universities, and highlight underperforming universities. Some 30 of the best universities in the UK are included.

Some 70 per cent of students did not apply for extenuating circumstances, despite being ill. It’s a pattern reflected in several other top academic universities: over 86 per cent of Oxford students did the same, while the national average was 74 per cent.

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The new rankings are the result of increased media coverage over student’s mental health. Until now, there had been no detailed examinations of how universities across Britain are coping with increasing numbers of students struggling with mental health issues.

Demand for mental health services has shot up at a time when there are less resources to go around. The NHS is facing front-line cuts that affect students particularly – GP practices at universities get less money than other general practices. The lack of trained psychiatrists across Britain, plus the “cascade” of cuts down the NHS, mean that universities have been pushed into the front-line.

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According to Jeremy Christey, who works in the Sussex University Counselling Service as well as running StudentAgainstDepression.org, NHS cuts have had a staggered impact on mental health care:

“The NHS threshold has gone up, which means that it’s harder to get access to treatment in all parts of mental health services. There’s less money for inpatient services, so more complex people are in the care of crisis services, which means that more people go from crisis to lower-tier services. There’s a cascade effect that impacts students, and as NHS trusts know that students have a university counselling service to go to, people can often be pointed back in our direction.”

This means both doctors and counsellors are working harder than ever to treat as many students as they can. Nationally, stories abound of students who haven’t been seen in months, or who have asked for help only to be turned aside, at both counselling services and doctor’s offices. Glasgow has a waiting list of seven to ten months, and York has had to re-evaluate its entire mental health provision.

Despite the somewhat negative outlook, Dr Thomson still stressed the importance of going to your GP: “Often with psychiatric or psychological care of any kind, there’s a waiting list. It’s important for us to say to patients, look: “You’re on the list, you will be seen.” In the mean time, we offer bridging work, often with third sector organisations, like group work or a couple of one-on-one counselling sessions, that provide some level of care before they can get treated properly.”

A spokesman for Newcastle said:

“As current winner of  the Times Higher Award for Outstanding Support for Students, we find this result very surprising, since we invest significant resources in support for the wellbeing of our students. The 2016 National Student Survey shows that 90% of our students were happy with their time at Newcastle, and in the International Student Barometer  93% of our International students said they were satisfied at Newcastle – one of the highest scores in the world.”