The Union of Students in Ireland (USI) has launched a new national student mental health campaign targeting students’ alcohol and sleeping habits.
University College Cork today hosted the launch of the new national campaign focused on helping students tackle with issues relating to mental health. The campaign, which is being run in association with the Health Service Executive (HSE), will primarily focus on the issues of sleep hygiene, exam stress and alcohol consumption among students.
In a press statement, Damien McClean, USI’s Vice-President for Welfare explained that students often feel guilty for availing of college-wide mental health services because they feel their own issues are “not serious enough”.
McClean said the goal of the new campaign, “recharge” was to combat this perception by comparing energy level to a battery “you can ReCharge yourself when you’re feeling low, but you are also valued when you are not at 100%”.
“Often students recognise that there are supports available to them, however they feel like their problems are not serious enough to warrant using them or they feel guilty about adding to waiting lines in cases that they deem more important than their own”, he said. McClean will make a series of visits to campuses around the country to promote the new campaign.
In a press statement, Jim Daly, the Minister with special responsibility for mental health, congratulated the national union for the work it had done for mental health in third-level institutions, stressing the need for “serious conversations” about mental health across society.
Sinead Glennon, a representative for the HSE, also praised the work done. In a press statement, she said that the recharge campaign is part of the process to normalise discussions of mental health in society. Glennon noted the campaign’s two main aims “one, to signpost the available supports and services, but secondly to focus on building resilience”.
As part of the new campaign, USI has also launched the +Connections app, which acts as a source of information about the services available for students.
