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Week 5 blues: when misery becomes mundane

Addressing Cambridge’s problem of habitual unhappiness


Picture the scene. A gaggle of naive, young freshers trapped in a small college lecture hall which, in the entirety of our university careers, most of us will never enter again. Like the rest of my year group, I have dragged myself out of my still unfamiliar bed to attend a mandatory welfare talk. Many among us are nursing a hangover from our first disastrous night out to Fez, and, as with the lecture hall, all those in attendance are hoping that they’ll never have the misfortune to enter the establishment again.

Over the ringing in our ears, we listen to the college welfare reps’ faint babble about signing up to a GP, the importance of safe sex practices, and the various care options available for our physical and mental health.

The pace of the talk slows slightly as the welfare reps discuss the unfortunate prevalence of poor mental health within higher education as a whole, but particularly at Cambridge. The presenters stress that both the university and the college have a number of services to alleviate these problems, and, though flawed, they are constantly working to improve them, endeavouring to make them as efficient as possible.

Yet, before moving on and allowing us to pretend to listen to where the fire safety check points are dotted around college, the welfare rep takes a moment to look behind him at his slideshow. Then, apparently realising that mental illness is hardly a jolly topic of discussion and suddenly becoming concerned that he has dwelled on the subject for too long, he says in a well-meaning gesture of good will, ‘By the way, I hope everyone knows that it’s okay not to have a mental illness.’

And, with that, a collective thought descended upon the small college lecture hall, or at least among those of us who were sufficiently alert to internalise what had just been said. In a moment of shared bewilderment, all of us wondered to ourselves, ‘What on earth have we gotten ourselves into?’

As someone who has grown up in a household in which the de-stigmatisation of mental illness was a near constant topic of dinner table discussion, I have always been cognisant that poor mental health can befall anyone, no matter their education, situation or socio-economic circumstances. Hearing of the quality and discretion of services available in Cambridge had, for me, been both impressive and reassuring. However, to think that I had willingly entered an institution where debilitating unhappiness was potentially more normal than contentment, well, it was concerning to say the least.

Yet, I reminded myself, that may only have been the poor wording of a lovely but woefully undertrained geography-student-cum-college-welfare-expert. If only that were the case.

As I have learned since that first Freshers’ Week talk, in Cambridge, we normalise misery to a dangerous extent. We comment on ‘Week 5 Blues’ with an exasperated shrug. We drop our ‘breakdowns’ and ‘panic attacks’ into casual conversation. We share grotesque moments of camaraderie when the person we are talking to tells us that they too spent the preceding evening crying alone in their bedroom. How funny is that? Certainly, these small exchanges do the important work of removing the shame and secrecy which is too often associated with mental illness. However, crucially, we are rarely acknowledging the implication that this behaviour may be unhealthy, and thus the impetus to actually do anything about it is similarly absent.

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Wait, you also feel crushed by the weight of your own perfectionism? Weird?!

Sadness is neither a badge of honour, nor something which cannot be changed. Though that fateful welfare talk may have been flawed in some respects, potentially causing more anxieties than it alleviated, it did successfully advertise the wealth of services which are available in Cambridge (they have also been reviewed and summarised here).

There are the ones we all know of which will probably, and hopefully, be our first ports of call: friends, family, Directors of Study, Tutors, and the oft-forgotten porters who are on hand for your welfare needs 24/7. Although the University Counselling Service is an imperfect service, please don’t allow its flaws to prevent you from seeking its help. Most colleges do offer their own welfare options too, but if you'd rather take your problems outside of the university, there's always your GP or valuable services like Nightline. Taking the first step towards confronting poor mental health can feel both personally demanding and intimidating, however, researching and making use of your options may prove to be your ultimate relief.

Nor do all problems necessarily require professional help. Happiness is not always a natural state of being, but something which must be actively and consciously pursued. The clichés remain commonplace because they have repeatedly shown themselves to be effective. Going outside, moderate exercise, and, significantly, socialising have all consistently proven to have a positive impacts on your mental health.

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Put yourself first and take the steps necessary to improve your mental health

University life frequently reminds me of the box of Lego we keep at my house for my younger cousins to play with. Each of us feels like a small, singular Lego brick trapped in this big inescapable box, which, despite its size, remains uncomfortably claustrophobic. We’re all jumbling and pushing against one another yet determinedly refusing to connect ourselves to each other.

In Cambridge, we ought to do the difficult work of forging a sense of community which isn’t predicated on stress and unhappiness. These feelings cannot be allowed to become our new normal without protest. Frankly, we need to have a higher standard for our own lives, and particularly for our mental wellbeing. Most of us have only three or four years in this weird and wonderful place. Surely, we ought to take proactive steps both in ourselves and amongst our friends to actually allow each other to enjoy them.

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