AGCAS Phoenix, October 2017 – Student Well-being

Increasing numbers of students are reporting anxiety and presenting with symptoms of depression and emotional fragility. There have been sharp rises in the demand for university counselling services and, from some quarters, accusations of institutional negligence towards a suffering student body. What part can careers and employability services play to ease the institutional burden and reduce student anxiety?

In this issue, we explore student well-being from the perspective of AGCAS members to better understand the support available to students and to share how services are delivering this within their institutions.  We also wanted to present a real-life student perspective; this issue opens with an honest account from a recent graduate.

Over the next few pages you can read about collaborative approaches to delivering well-being services, with some well-thought-out overlap in duty of care. The value of normalising mental health discussions is explored, both from a student and career practitioner perspective. There is an article about subjective well-being theory in the context of careers education. There are also tips on how to support students during times of adversity to develop a positive outlook and change their way of thinking, which challenges traditional definitions of success and achievement. Resilience, failure, rejection, confidence and mistakeability all receive a good airing in this

Finally, while student support is our primary focus, we also explore well-being from the practitioner perspective. We consider how best to ‘support the supporters’, with articles highlighting the importance of staff well-being and the benefits of reflective practice.

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Phoenix oct 2017

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