Summary
Fatemah Ghanem is running for Health and Wellbeing Officer, while already representing Glasgow Kelvin as part of the Scottish Youth Parliament. Now, as a third year psychology student, she has set her sights on the University of Stirling.
Fatemah Ghanem is running for Health and Wellbeing Officer, while already representing Glasgow Kelvin as part of the Scottish Youth Parliament. She serves on the Health, Wellbeing and Sport committee, and has been involved with planning many national consultations and mental health campaigns. Her current project is on an initiative to improve mental health training and education.
“I was actually at the Labour Party conference on the weekend in the labour conference as an executor for SAMH (the Scottish Association For Mental Health),” Fatemah tells Brig. I spoke to MSP’s, counsellors, GP, doctors and other organisations that are linked to mental health. I spoke about what young people are struggling with when it comes to mental health.”
Now, as a third year psychology student, she has set her sights on the University of Stirling.
“I wanted to contribute something to the university community and to the students because of my experience. I wanted to make some changes to the students and the campus. As a student here, I know some of the challenges myself and other students are facing,” she says.
She is also particularly interested in encouraging more open conversations among students, facilitating a range of wellbeing drop-in events, peer support groups, and working with local organisations and with societies directly.
“I was brought up in two different cultures, so I wanted to speak about the challenges about that when you struggling with your mental health or the challenges when you want to access the support and how that would seem when about when it comes to to different cultures.
“I just want to raise that awareness and let you know, let people actually know about the different challenges. It’s not just easy to say ‘here we go, this is support, get it.’ It’s not that simple, there’s different barriers and different things as well.
“I’ve already spoken to F.E.M society and DSAS. I’ve been endorsed by both of these societies. I do hope to work closely with them and with other societies um as part of my consultation and setting up my priorities based on student needs.”
Fatemah’s first priority would be to run a consultation with students to assess the services they need, and to work on broadening the resources available from the university and reducing wait times. She is also interested in campaigning for a broader range of short and long term counselling support for students.
“There’s a lot of students who are struggling and either with accessibility needs and having to wait for quite a long time to actually get that appointment and get that adjustment that is needed. So I really want to make sure this is not the case. Whether it’s short term support while you’re studying, or long term counselling if you’re really struggling. It needs to be there for us.”
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Featured Image Credit: Fatemah Ghanem
