On The Beat

Support network

SHUTTERSTOCK

By Peter Somerford

Conservatoires in the UK are responding to a rising demand for counselling services by putting more resources into mental health support, and developing more integrated strategies for addressing health and wellbeing. The Royal Northern College of Music (RNCM), which in January 2019 appointed Sara Ascenso, a clinical psychologist and trained pianist, as its first lecturer in musicians’ health and wellbeing, has experienced a 20 per cent increase in requests for counselling since the start of the current academic year, compared with the equivalent period last year. At the Guildhall School of Music & Drama, head of counselling Nick Barwick says the last two years have seen respectively 25 and 28 per cent of the student body requesting counselling services, and he expects the number to rise again this year.

Barwick says there are no definitive answers to explain the increase in demand. ‘It’s increasing across the board in higher education institutions,’ he notes, ‘and that’s perhaps a sign of the general anxiety among young people. But the number of students seeking counselling in conservatoires is higher than in other institutions. I think one of the major reasons for this is that conservatoire students are being asked, either explicitly or implicitly, to use themselves in their training – to use their emotional life in order to perform.’ Barwick suggests that rising requests for counselling could indicate that more students are recognising that working something through reflectively is better than trying to press on regardless. He also notes that the increasing demand at the Guildhall School is partly a reflection of the level of resources that the institution has put into its counselling: ‘Having a service where students know they can get proper help brings more of them forward.’ As relatively small institutions, conservatoires do not usually have the means to provide the range of counselling services that big universities can offer. The Royal Conservatoire of Scotland (RCS) has only one full-time counsellor, but is set to benefit from a £20m investment by the Scottish government to fund the appointment of 80 new counsellors in colleges and universities over the next four years.

Stephen Broad, director of research and knowledge exchange at RCS, says: ‘To supplement our counselling provision we use the Big White Wall, a highly professional 24/7 online mental health and wellbeing support service. And we’ve had other initiatives, such as mental health first-aid training for staff, and the Student Union getting in Therapet dogs to help de-stress students at critical times such as final-year exams and performances.’

The RNCM is part of the Greater Manchester University Student Mental Health Service, which launched at the beginning of this academic year. Ascenso describes the new £1.6m service as ‘a groundbreaking initiative that joins five higher education institutions and the NHS, with the aim of providing timely access to specialist support for students dealing with complex mental illness. The service targets conditions that the typical in-house counselling provision in universities cannot support, and prevents students from “falling between the cracks” of university and NHS services.’

‘Conservatoire students are being asked to use their emotional life in order to perform’ - Nick Barwick, head of counselling, GSMD

As conservatoires access more resources it becomes even more important that they have a clear organisational mental health strategy. Claire Cordeaux, chief executive of the British Association for Performing Arts Medicine (BAPAM), says: ‘It’s great to have counsellors who students can go to, and to have some kind of training available, but the real prize is to have the whole organisation signed up to a strategy, so that everyone is moving in the right direction and everything is mutually reinforcing.’ The outlook is more positive now, she says, because conservatoires recognise that mental health is a concern: ‘We’re not having to make the case for mental health any more. We now need to ask what is going to work best, and how do you evolve as an organisation to become a culture of health.’

BAPAM runs free clinics in cities across England, Scotland and Wales and has seen the number of performing arts students coming explicitly for psychosocial support almost double in the last two years ‒ although more than 80 per cent of students come primarily with musculoskeletal problems. BAPAM established a Psychosocial Working Group in 2019 to bring together clinicians and performing arts organisations with the aim of addressing challenges to the mental health and wellbeing of those who work in the sector.

The group recently published a guidance paper explaining the different levels of intervention for mental health issues, outlining recommended best practice, and signposting helpful resources. The paper also underlines the importance of tracking patient experiences and outcomes in order to understand whether interventions are effective. ‘If you set up a strategy, you’ve got to know what goals you want to achieve and then you need to measure whether you’re achieving them,’ says Cordeaux. ‘Otherwise you have no idea that what you’re doing is the right thing.’ Conservatoires are sharing examples of evidence-based good practice through the Healthy Conservatoires Network, formed in 2015, which takes its inspiration from the Healthy Universities whole-system approach to health promotion. Broad explains that, ‘The idea is to understand health and welfare as not being about remedial services, but instead making sure that health and wellbeing are embedded in all the different activities of the institution.’

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