Our Teams

Counselling Team

Our counsellors help students to manage difficulties impacting their engagement with study and University life. Counselling sessions offer a space for reflection and are different from giving advice, requiring motivation and active participation. Counselling is not recommended at a time of crisis but can be helpful when the crisis is over and there is space to reflect.

Our counsellors are qualified, experienced practitioners; we also provide placements for counsellors in the latter stages of training.

Psychological Wellbeing Team

The Psychological Wellbeing team offers psychoeducational workshops, webinars and 1:1 interventions to help students manage their mental wellbeing

Mental Health Advice Team

The Mental Health Advisors are professionals with a background in the NHS and social care. We do not provide mental health treatment but offer advice to students with complex and severe mental health difficulties and can help you to link up with NHS and specialist services locally. We also coordinate University support for students with a mental health disability and meet with students planning offsite activities.

About Us

There is widespread interest in student mental health and in the support provision offered by Universities. We have collated a set of the most frequently requested data on the services offered by the Counselling & Mental Health Service at Durham University. This is summarised for academic years 2015/16 – 2021/22 in the following tables:

• Summary Counselling & Mental Health Service Data
• Data by Year Group
• Staffing Levels in the Counselling & Mental Health Service

The Counselling & Mental Health Service offers a range of services to students and staff. For the academic year 2019-21 we have produced an additional table of data to reflect the activities of:

• The Counselling and Psychological Wellbeing teams
• The Mental Health Advisory Team
• Training

Counselling & Mental Health Service Activity by Function

This data is limited to the Counselling & Mental Health Service. Durham University has a wide range of support services, including Student Support Officers in our residential Colleges, Academic Advisors, Mentors, Chaplains, and our students who work as peer-support through their roles on College or Society committees. It is not possible for us to collate data on the support offered by this broad network. Students are signposted towards the Counselling and Mental Health Service for support when they are experiencing mental health difficulties or are facing distress that is best served by our specialist team.

We analyse data by academic year, from 1 September to 31 August. Support for our students frequently extends beyond a single term, so we do not collate data on a termly basis. Durham University does not operate a semester programme. We do not collect data on waiting times for services.