In the hallowed seat of learning that is Cambridge, there is a recurring line of argument which goes roughly along the lines of: Hey, Cambridge isn’t actually that bad, is it, despite all the bad bits? It pops up every few months, throwing up some of the clichés Cambridge students are forced to swallow from the start of their applications to graduation: we work hard but we play even harder; watch out for the ‘Week Five Blues’; having another essay crisis again; oh but aren’t we the luckiest people in the world, just to be here; look at the light on the Cam in the evening. Cambridge isn’t actually all that bad, is it?

A fun game based on the above is: Does this Quote Come from an Article about the University of Cambridge or a List of Symptoms of Severe Clinical Depression? Here’s some for you to play along with at home: “a lot of your energy will just be taken up simply by existing, by… functioning as a human being” / “crying and drinking and… not sleeping enough” / “Simple tasks… will become a complete nightmare” / “you would work harder but you don’t have time because you can’t stop crying and you don’t know why” / “at times it’s absolute hell”.

Did you guess right? The answer is all of those quotes are students’ descriptions of life at Cambridge.

That seems like a problem. Maybe I’m overreacting. It’s just that when those things happened to me –when I couldn’t get out of bed, when it took me days to check my email for fear of being berated for how many weeks behind I was, when I developed a substance-abuse-based set of coping mechanisms I thought, eventually, something was seriously wrong. I went to the doctor. And then I went to the college nurse, and then I went to the University Counselling Service, and then I went to the doctor again, and then I went to some college authority figures, and then I went home. I’m currently nearing the end of my ‘intermitted’ year.

Don’t get me wrong, I sniffed some old library books too. I went to some great parties in May Week. I stood on King’s Bridge and watched the sunset, and it was lovely, but not lovely enough to make me forget that I’d skipped my last two supervisions and I felt mind-numbingly awful all the time and I hadn’t showered in four days because it just seemed like so much effort. It’s possible the people who write those articles, where they have all the same symptoms as I did but everything is magically cured by wandering through Trinity, are just made of stronger stuff than I am.

But actually, that might be part of the problem. Haven’t they told us since we applied that it would be tough here? We’re Cambridge students. We’re supposed to be made of stronger stuff than everyone else. Maybe it’s tougher than we expected, but that’s probably just because it’s Cambridge. This all comes with the territory. It’s normal.

But, no, come on. A bit of stress is normal. We signed up for that. We didn’t sign up for an environment that is so toxic, on so many levels, that severe and widespread mental health problems are laughed away as just another one of those silly Cambridge quirks. And in this way, and via these arguments about how great Cambridge actually is, the reputation of the university reinforces itself, even though I think a very sizeable number of us know it to be false.

I get why it’s difficult to accept that the situation is as serious as it is. You don’t want to be ‘That Person’ saying: “Actually, thanks JCR welfare team, but I’m not sure a bar of Dairy Milk in my pidge is going to cure my Week Five Blues this time.” We tried so hard to get here and to complain that it’s making us seriously ill would be ungrateful. No one wants to admit that something they worked for is sometimes less of a dream come true and more of a nightmare. But dismissing these mental health problems with a “remember how lucky you are to be here!” and saying it’ll all be better after a nice walk to Grantchester, actually hurts people. This kind of attitude is the reason there are students thinking: “Well, I feel like life’s not worth living, but it’s this bad for everyone, isn’t it? Didn’t they all say it would be tough?”

There’s tough and then there’s unbearable. Cambridge is hard enough without us making it harder for ourselves by failing to draw appropriate boundaries between ‘acceptable amounts of stressed-out’ and ‘severe health problems’. Maybe the university is still worth it, despite the awful bits – but suggesting that the problems aren’t really that bad and a good look at the pretty architecture will make it all better isn’t doing anyone any favours. The only way things are going to change is by acknowledging, and taking seriously, the effect Cambridge can have on the mental health of its students. But let’s all carry on gazing wistfully at King’s chapel in the evening sun, too. Just in case.