Mental health of students in higher education

College Report CR166governance, continuing professional development, etc., are all covered bythe trust and the university reimburses it monthly for the hours it provides.We run a total of 60 half-day clinics each year, concentrated mostly duringterm-time but with some also during university vacations.Through the Queen Mary University/East London NHS FoundationTrust Liaison Group (a group which developed out of a working group onstudent mental health in 2003) reciprocal arrangements for medical studentpsychiatric admissions between East London Foundation Trust and Camdenand Islington NHS Foundation Trust have been established since 2007, forstudents from Queen Mary University, University College Hospital and theRoyal Free Hospital.Oxford UniversityUniversity of Oxford Student Counselling Service employs a consultantpsychiatrist (0.2 whole time equivalent). The main duties of this post are:to act as medical consultant to the teamto assess students (referred by counsellors) in whom a mental illnessmight be developingto liaise with and advise NHS primary care practitioners on treatmentoptions, including appropriate medicationto play a key role in managing service interface with NHS secondaryand tertiary serviceswhere requested, to advise academic and support staff on theappropriate management of students with mental health problemsto contribute to strategic thinking on the university’s mental healthpolicies.A key benefit in this role results from the fact that the psychiatrist is afull member of the counselling service team, attending weekly staff meetingsand all training and staff development events.Brunel UniversityThe mental health support coordinator and the head of the counsellingservice meet monthly with a care programme approach lead within the NHSmental health trust to discuss shared students who are in-patients and outpatientswith the trust. This is only relevant to students who live on or nearthe campus and are under Hillingdon Mental Health Services, but it has beeninvaluable in terms of helping us find out how the trust works and what thestatutory responsibilities are.Warwick UniversityAt Warwick we have just been given by the primary care trust a designatedcommunity psychiatric nurse to work alongside our mental healthcoordinators. The nurse will also work in the community part-time, but we78 http://www.rcpsych.ac.uk