FEARS FOR UNI STUDENTS AS LIFELINE AXED
4,000 sign petition to bring back suicide safeguard
A MENTAL health helpline for students that ran for 48 years was axed just before freshers’ week this year.
Keele University’s volunteer service has been closed, leaving support services outsourced to an existing online platform.
It is one of nine Nightline services to close amid a mental health alert with 95 student suicides in England and Wales in the year to July 2017.
Some 4,000 people have signed a petition calling for its reinstatement.
Student Jessie Day said of the move: “How dare the university take away such a vital resource?”
The closure comes just months after Jade Clements, 24, took her own life while heading for a first in biomedical sciences at the Staffs university. The Students Union says Keele Nightline was axed because its volunteers were not professionally trained to deal with students’ problems.
But critics claim that its replacement, online counselling provider Big White Wall, does not provide the vital human support that is needed.
Steve Flatt, director of the Psychological Therapies Unit in Liverpool, has claimed remote therapies “fly in the face of what it is to be human”.
Keele University said: “Big White Wall has been available for some time, with peer and professional support, and is available 24/7, 365 days a year.
“Nightline was a student society run by volunteers, available during term time only and, on the nights that it did run, was open from 9pm to 3am.”
He added: “To ensure the best possible support for our students we need to ensure that those giving support are professionally trained in line with sector best practice. Unfortunately, the existing Nightline society was unable to meet these standards.”
There are still 36 UK and Ireland Nightlines helping 1.8million students.