Mental health at Cambridge can’t be treated by college welfare teams

Week Five: the week where students jinx all their shortcomings on the infamous “blues”.

The “blues” perpetuate essay crises. They destroy any attempts to be productive. The week itself is when colleges go overboard with fun and exciting activities to help make our lives somewhat less boring – pet visits, cakes and tea, Pilates, yoga, even meditation.

College welfare teams put make an effort to ensure Week Five is as “blueless” as possible. But the real impact of these activities has to be questioned.

Plenty of food and drink for welfare 

I am not complaining at the free cakes outside the library, or the arrival of a petting zoo. But what real difference can these activities make? One week of fun hardly helps when the other seven involve nothing more than mundane work and stress.

Despite our welfare teams doing a fantastic job at supporting us during Week Five, I very much doubt these activities have any real lasting impact on improving our mental health.

The problem is not the welfare team: my own college team has formed a strong support network, and works incredibly hard to prevent any serious problems amongst the students at Robinson.

We’ve had a Mean Girls college movie night , free food in our JCR and even an RCSA Christmas party. A strong welfare team is essential in the formation of a healthy college community – Robinson is not the only college involved, and the same can said for every college welfare team.

RCSA welfare Christmas party

But no matter how hard the welfare team of a college work, or how supportive they are, welfare provision will never be enough. The flaw in welfare is not the college welfare team, but the system and structure of Cambridge itself.

This leads us to question our understanding of welfare altogether. If  we recognise that the entire term at Cambridge is a non-stop tour of stress, anxiety and deadlines, then why must we concentrate so heavily on Week Five? From my own experience, I’ve never had “Week Five Blues”.

In fact, from my own experiences, I find Weeks One and Eight the most stressful, yet we never hear of week one or eight “blues”. Starting a new term increases anxiety – the pre-term meetings with your DOS, tutor and supervisor, all mingled with trying to find a suitable routine and the advent of real work which brings a shock to the system.

The last week is manic to say the least: last minute essay deadlines, coupled with end of term meetings and with the added chore of packing – yet no one is offering me free cakes or stress busting yoga.

No blues here

The irony is that we make such a fuss about Week Five, yet usually this is the week where everything is in place – a regular routine is set, essays are in fully swing – no sign of the dreaded blues here.

Additionally, our reaction to intermitting is one of shock – we automatically blame the welfare team and assume that a lack of support was the cause. We need to recognise the fact that being at Cambridge is bloody difficult. It is not the same environment as other universities. Yet we continue to treat mental health here as a burden – it comes with a stigma associated with personal failing.

Getting into the welfare Christmas spirit

Our whole outlook on mental health needs to change. We need to see mental health on an individual level, and not try and structure it as one problem for everyone. If mental health is individual, then our method of dealing with it should recognise this.

There isn’t a lack of welfare at Cambridge – just a lack of understanding.