As the university exam season kicks in, counselling services, doctors and helplines are preparing for their annual avalanche of stressed-out students. It’s not just a case of pre-exam jitters or hungover slackers wimpering at the thought of getting up before lunchtime. The pressure is genuinely on.

With larger numbers of undergraduates than ever before, just having a degree will no longer be enough to make you stand out from the crowd. But a good degree can make all the difference in the job market and also to the prospect of actually being able to pay off that massive student debt — the majority of students now graduate owing a crushing £13,501.

In fact, student stress has reached such a crisis point that it merits its own talking shop. The second Universities UK conference on mental wellbeing takes place next month, and will hear from, among others, a panel of students who have all suffered from mental illness while in higher education. Last year’s inaugural conference followed the creation of the Universities UK Mental Health Committee and the Royal College of Psychiatrists’ report in 2003, which pointed to the growing mental health problems in Britain’s universities, and stated that levels of counselling staff had not kept pace with the increases in student numbers.

The problem is a serious one. In 2002 alone, 625 young people aged 15-24 — the age range that encompasses most undergraduates — committed suicide in the UK. But there is little criticism of the work that counsellors themselves are doing. Helen Symons, vice-president for welfare at the National Union of Students, believes that: “On the whole, university counselling is of excellent quality.” They are, however, under-resourced, and struggling to persuade those who need their assistance to accept it.

Campuses across the country may be offering everything from leaflets on revising to hypnosis as students prepare for finals but help doesn’t always reach those who would benefit from it. “The students who don’t need this advice are the ones who come; and those who do need it avoid it like the plague,” says Alan Percy of Oxford University counselling service.

It’s not just the work-shy, those who haven’t opened a book in three years, who get distraught. “Often it’s the brightest, most ambitious students who get most stressed. They say they’re worried about failing but, actually, they are worried about not getting a first or a 2.1,” says Ann Heyno, the head of counselling at the University of Westminster. Others leave it too late to get help, waiting until exams are looming.

But perhaps the biggest challenge facing the service providers comes from men. Male students are significantly less likely to access support services than their female counterparts. Overall, women account for roughly two thirds of students using counselling services. For the past two years, every attendee at the University of Wolverhampton’s exam-stress workshops has been female, while at Westminster, where the university dropout rate is 71 per cent higher among male students, 71 per cent of those seen by counsellors are women.

The reasons are debatable but Heyno points to preconceptions about the role of men in society. “Women talk about things but, as a man, it is more difficult to admit that you need help: it’s not masculine. Men are always supposed to be having a good time, getting women, achieving academically and, sometimes, they just can’t. They turn in on themselves, get depressed and yet keep up a macho front. Then they turn to alcohol or drugs or to being aggressive.”

Sometimes the outcome can be tragic. The suicide figures from 2002 included 134 young British women aged 15-24, an increase of 6 per cent on the previous year. For young men, however, the figures are far higher, with 491 in the same age group killing themselves. Such statistics are now ringing alarm bells, and efforts are being made to address the attitudes that stop men seeking help. In 2004, Heyno launched a campaign at Westminster University entitled “Big Boys Don’t Cry.

” The scheme has had some success, and Heads of University Counselling Services (HUCS), the professional body, are keen to extend the Big Boys’ message nationwide. “The difficulty is convincing men to come forward,” says Heyno. “Once they do, we work with them in the same way as we do women, allowing for the obvious differences.”

Elsewhere too, initiatives are underway, with male group-therapy sessions, drop-in hours and advertising all aimed at encouraging male students to seek help for their problems.

Simon Howes of the Campaign Against Living Miserably (CALM), an expanding support organisation specifically for young men, thinks this is vital: “Young men rarely go to their GPs and they don’t use local health services. I think more than 60 per cent of our callers are not talking to anyone else.”

While the organisation also works with nonstudents, two of its existing “CALM zones” are in Liverpool and Manchester, areas with large student populations and, its national development co-ordinator, Jane Powell, says: “Students are high on our list of priorities. We target the cafés, bars, pubs and clubs where students go.”

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