Charlie arrived for her first day at Bristol University with a complex history of mental ill health.
The 19-year-old music undergraduate from Barnes, west London, had attempted suicide at 16 and was told at 18 that she had a borderline personality disorder, which affects the ability to manage emotions. It left her with “constant intrusive thoughts that I had to kill myself”.
She added: “My parents never put any pressure on me but somehow I still developed this sense that I have to be perfect and I was at this very pressurised girls’ school. I am hard-pressed to think of someone in my year who didn’t have some mental health difficulty.”
She had received intensive mental health treatment at home and as soon as she arrived at university she signed up with the student health service, but had to wait until November 29 for the local NHS trust to assign her a mental health nurse to co-ordinate her care. It took until January 11 for her to see a psychiatrist and get her medication reviewed. Once this was done she was “impressed” by the mental health treatment and care available on campus.
“I think everyone finds the beginning of university hard,” she said. “I started to feel my mental health deteriorate. I was having more frequent panic attacks and more intrusive thoughts again and was getting more and more depressed.”
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With no medical mental health support for most of her first term she relied on her senior resident, a student volunteer based in her hall of residence. “[My first term] was very dangerous,” she said. “Without my senior resident living at the end of my corridor I wouldn’t be here. I needed someone who would knock on my door to check on me, and who I could turn to in a crisis.” She said she would update her parents on her situation but didn’t want to call them “every night crying down the phone”.
