Today is University Mental Health Day, the national day for student mental wellbeing awareness. It’s easy to think Mental Health is only important for people with diagnosed conditions but we all have Mental Health in exactly the same way as we have physical health, and everybody suffers at some stages in their life.
University Mental Health Day this year closely follows another Mental Health campaign titled ‘Mind Your Head’, a campaign designed to raise awareness of mental health in agriculture. Thinking of the long hours farmers work, usually in isolation and without a way to escape from their workload, it isn’t hard to figure out why so many farmers struggle. Having read various papers and thought about it for myself, I definitely think this applies to vets, vet nurses and vet students too.
As vet students, we have slightly different pressures to farmers and vets: we may struggle with homesickness, deadlines, financial worries, the lack of work-life balance and quite often that feeling of being inadequate. If any of these feelings sound familiar, I guarantee you’re not alone!
There is no getting away from the fact that our day-to-day life can be stressful, but you do not have to suffer in silence. Thanks to campaigns such as ‘Mind Your Head’ and days like ‘University Mental Health Day’, Mental Health awareness is currently higher than ever before, particularly at university and other sectors of education. This means, there is always somebody to talk to, be it your local GP, your tutor, University counselling, or even ‘Vet Life’, a fantastic organisation who are there for all vets, nurses and students to talk to about any problem at any time of day. Sometimes the best thing you can do to help yourself is to speak to someone else and let all those feelings out the bottle. It is super important to remember that you are important, you are good enough, and you are not alone.
Barking Mad 