Specialist Mentor – Mental Health (SM:MH)
Specialist Mentors (SM:MH) provide specialised, one-to-one support to help students address any barriers to learning due to mental health difficulties. They help students to identify and overcome these barriers by teaching them coping strategies, goal setting, time management, and other skills to help them succeed in their studies and create a healthy work-life balance.
The support provided by the mentors can address different areas, such as:
- Coping with anxiety and stressful situations: They can teach you strategies for managing stress and anxiety, and help you find ways to relax and calm your mind.
- Concentration difficulties: They can help you identify the causes of your concentration difficulties, and teach you techniques to improve your focus.
- Time management: They can teach you how to organise your time and set goals, and help you prioritise your workload.
- Goal setting: They can work with you to set realistic and achievable goals, and help you develop a plan to achieve them.
- Timetabling: They can help you create a schedule that works for you and teach you how to stick to it.
- Prioritising workload: They can help you identify the most important tasks, and teach you how to manage your time effectively.
- Creating a suitable work-life balance: They can teach you how to balance your academic and personal responsibilities, and help you create a healthy balance between work and leisure time.
It’s important to note that the support provided by the mentors is not the same as counselling. They’re there to help you understand and recognise the barriers to learning you’re facing and support you in developing strategies to overcome them.
Mentors can work with a range of mental health difficulties including:
- Depression
- Anxiety
- Eating disorders
- Bipolar disorder
- Psychotic illnesses such as schizophrenia
- Obsessive compulsive disorder, among others.
The support provided will be tailored to the specific needs of the student, and for some students, this support will need to be on-going, while for others it might be gradually phased out or only be required at certain points of their course.
