World Mental Health Day 2026 is today, 10 October, so it feels right for now to be the time to talk about mental health in students, and mostly share my own experience with it in the hopes of helping just at least one person that reads this; student or not.
My own experience with mental health, both good and bad, will be different from yours. Everyone’s will be different, because we are all different. All of my writing has been to share my personal experiences and how they have shaped my life, in order to hopefully change someone else’s perspective on life and help them feel less alone.
Loneliness. I truly think that this is one of the biggest struggles for students to deal with, because it is the easiest thing to slip into without realising, and the feeling grows so heavy that you don’t realise you’re being crushed by it until it’s too late. I know I struggled with it in first year, and often still do now – I latch on to people because I’m scared of being alone, and I think most human beings do, anthropologically speaking we’re social creatures; we need to be surrounded by other people.
Everyone is alone, so, no one is.
Moving to university is inherently lonely. No matter how people you may have around you, everyone is in the same lonely boat but also in their own boat trying to make ends meet and get through the next three or four years of their lives. You can walk around campus surrounded by hundreds of people at once and still feel isolated, and like you’re the only one who feels the way you feel, but you’re not, and therefore, you’re not alone.
This circles back to my point: everyone has different experiences with mental health. Some may have struggled with it since being a young child, some may not realise they are suffering, and some may have just begun to struggle with theirs, and are looking for a way forward.
I’m not going to write a cliché list of things you can do to fix your mental health, I’m sure everyone has heard that you need to spend time outside, go for a walk, write in a journal, talk to a friend – all of these things do help, 100% they help and you should do them if you feel that your mental health is suffering, but I’m sure I don’t need to tell you that. The truth is none of these things may work for you – but there will be something else that will.
“Support starts with being heard.”
The theme for this year’s World Mental Health Day has been uniformly decided by the World Federation for Mental Health: “Lived Experiences Heard: Real Voices, Real Change”. The World Mental Health Day website is currently a place where people have shared their experiences with mental health, and how it has affected their lives.
“It’s good to talk. It’s even better to be heard. Being heard helps us feel understood, less alone, and more able to cope with the challenges we face. That’s why our message this World Mental Health Day is simple: Support starts with being heard.” – the World Mental Health Day website.
In short, the world is full of people who are or have struggled, whether short-term or long-term; getting fired from work, losing a loved one, being trapped in a war-torn country or simply an imbalance in hormones – there will always be suffering – but there will also always be a way to get through it.
Knowing that it will all be okay.
Just because all I have talked about is pain and loneliness, and seeming really rather pessimistic about life in general, I’m actually rather the opposite – but it’s being optimistic and realising the truth that makes seeing life for what it is a good thing.
Yes there will always be people who struggle to deal with their mental health, I may always struggle with mine – but knowing that there are people around me to talk to, even if I don’t know them, and having momentum towards something (even though I don’t know what) is what gives me the strength I need to keep moving forward.
So, if you or someone you know is struggling with their mental health – there are services available to you to help through the University of Stirling such as Student Support Services, Spectrum.Life, and the Mental Health Team. There are also other helplines such as Samaritans that are available for 24/7 support, or contact your GP if it is an ongoing issue.
Featured image credit: Vie Studio via Pexels
