Struggling with your mental health can be a very lonely experience, especially if you
don’t know anyone else who is.
Everyone says it is not just you, lots of people feel the same way; but until you meet someone who understands, it can feel a lot like you are on your own, or that something is very wrong with you. If you feel this way, I hope the stories below show you that there is not. You are okay. Mental health has always been a topic I am passionate about and seeing as it is World Mental Health Day today, I wanted to take this opportunity to share other peoples stories about how university has affected their mental health, and how their mental health has affected their time at university. Heading to university can be a whirlwind. Meeting new people, moving away, and starting something new can be even harder when you are struggling with your mental health. It can feel overwhelming, and it can feel lonely. It is my hope that this article will help at least one person see that they are not alone, and that it does and will get better.
Pre-Covid, how much did you hear about mental health online? How many creators did you see sharing their stories and tips they have learned along the way? Compare that to how many you see today. Maybe it is just my algorithm but I feel since Covid people are starting to become a lot more open talking about their mental health, which I think is beautiful. However, we still have so far to go, and we may never reach a stage where the world feels comfortable with the fact that sometimes, we are not okay. So, with this article I take a step in the direction of breaking the stigma and hope to show you that it is okay to not be okay.
Other peoples stories of their mental health journeys
As someone who has suffered with anxiety since I was in primary school, going to university was something that did not even seem possible at some points. But thankfully I reached a point where I was able to move to a new city and go to university. It was really daunting at first and I had to manage my anxiety a lot, doing things that calmed me down and taking time for myself in the midst of a crazy year. But overall, my anxiety was manageable until my final year, when the pressure built and I felt myself slipping into an anxiety spiral which had not happened for a few years. I went back to therapy and focused on the things that really mattered in final year – my mental well-being and enjoying my university experience with friends. It was not easy but I came out with a degree and a lot of good memories! University was definitely worth it in the end and even though some of it was tough, the people I met there made it a lot easier!
I was eleven years old when I was diagnosed with anxiety and obsessive compulsive disorder, both of which have had a significant effect on the next ten years of my life. After a bad panic attack during Covid, university was the last thing on my mind. I decided I wasn’t even going to apply and spent my A Levels completely ignoring any talk about university. It was not a path I felt I could comfortably take. A significant OCD attack a few years later put me in a dark place and I finally decided to try counselling again. It took three years, an apprenticeship, multiple doctor’s appointments, medication, and a year of therapy for me to finally feel like university was a challenge I was ready to take on. I am still struggling and question most days whether this is the right path for me, but I am grateful that I have the chance to try and find out. Even though it terrifies me that pushing myself may lead to a setback, I now know I have the ability to get better, it just might take a little while and being ‘better’ might not be quite what I expected.
Back when I first started first year, I was trying really hard to get out of a negative headspace, and I thought coming to uni would be a chance for a fresh start. Even though I gained independence and made friends on my course, it still didn’t feel like I had found my people – and that was so important to me. Everyone says university is the time for that kind of thing, but I felt hopeless. It was not until second year that I met my friends (which I honestly did not expect at all), and they have become my second family. I can turn to them for anything, and they make me feel so secure. I wish I could tell my first-year self that it does get better and to just keep going, because I feel like I am proof that it really does.
I first noticed I might be struggling with my mental health back when I had a lot going on in my life and a lot of decisions to make, such as whether if I wanted to go to university, and if I did, whether I wanted to stay at home or to move out. I think life was unconsciously stressing me out to the point where I was making bad decisions that were not helpful at all. Over time I realised my reactions were out of character for me, and it prompted me to find out more. When I was diagnosed with bipolar disorder I was confused at first as I did not really understand what it would mean, which scared me. I did not know whether it would stop me from doing things in life that I wanted to do. After talking to professionals about it and taking a leap of faith with medication, I soon discovered that a lot of time has been put into developing medication, leading to something as easy as taking a pill a day and now it is not something I think about every day. Being away at university is tough, as even if you are not struggling mentally, you are constantly torn between socialising and needing time for yourself to understand and reflect, and I think that combined with not knowing how to regulate my emotions meant life was sometimes really tricky in my first year. It was only after I made friends and began to understand what the meaning of friends really is, especially in a university student setting, that really helped me move forward. Even if a solution is not reached, I have found just sharing a problem with friends is immeasurably more helpful than I would have thought. The way university teaches you to think in different ways and to think critically has really helped me understand what’s most important personally and if something is helping me grow or if I am helping others to grow. Learning how to think more logically and plan it out has been really helpful, rather than relying on how I feel on the day to day as that can be unpredictable.
When I first started university, my mental health definitely took a bit of a hit. Everything felt new and quite overwhelming: moving away from home, making new friends, and keeping up with the workload at the same time. I felt quite homesick most days and found it really hard to get into a proper routine. There were days when I felt really anxious or down, especially when things got stressful or I felt like everyone else was settling in faster than I was. I found that managing money, deadlines, and my social life all at once was way harder than I had thought initially, but finding the right channels to go through to talk to someone about how I was feeling definitely helped me in the long run. I also found that getting out there and testing your limits of familiar comfort was definitely worth it. I made some of the greatest friends who helped me through a lot especially when it came to my mental health all because I took a chance.
I have always wanted to study. My parents encouraged me to, and in my family I had many examples to look up to. What people do not often say is that university brings a lot of changes, it is a real upheaval. You have to learn to live on your own, make new friends, but above all, re-learn how to study and work, because it’s nothing like the pace of high school. You are left on your own. You are free to attend classes or not. I was very lucky to be surrounded by supportive people, because my final year of undergraduate studies was mentally exhausting. It is the year when you apply for a masters and especially in psychology, the number of spots is extremely limited. I chose to take a different path, but fortunately it is one I enjoy much more, one in which I feel useful. Being in the first year of my masters was not easy either, as I had to deal with grief and the loss of my mother. That is also something people rarely talk about. In a way, being overloaded with work helped me think about something else, but on the other hand, everything happened so fast that I feel like I didn’t have time to process my emotions. Today, I feel fulfilled in what I do, but I struggled a lot with stress, anxiety, and especially the fear of failure.
After being in school since I was 4 years old and being told what I had to do with my life I decided to take the opportunity to have a gap year after my A levels. One of my reasons for choosing this was to do with my mental health. I have always been a good student but really struggled with how I imagined myself. Whilst at school I based myself off how well I did in exams, and for me failing only one exam made me feel like I was failing at life. Over the years when I did my GCSEs and A levels, I would constantly stress about upcoming exams to the point where I would become so upset and stressed that I would get myself into a rabbit hole of bad thoughts that took me a long time to get out of. So, for me a gap year was the right decision for my mental health.
During my gap year, alongside working to save money for uni, I am taking time to focus on my mental health. The stress from school has left my mental health in a bad place but over this year I aim to work on that. One thing that I am doing is challenging myself to do as many of the wainwrights in the lake district as possible. I am hoping that as I do this, I will be able to see that life is not all about grades and what people think about you but instead about having fun and seeing the beauty it has to offer.
Mental health support: resources and links