Over four in ten students don’t feel comfortable talking to their college tutor about their mental wellbeing, with more people feeling comfortable talking to their Director of Studies (DoS), a Varsity survey revealed.

The survey found that college nurses and mental health officers are the source of support most students feel comfortable going to, at 68% of students, while 45% feel able to talk to their college tutor and 59% to their DoS.

Only 41% feel at ease seeking support from the University Counselling Service (UCS) and one in ten surveyed said they don’t feel comfortable talking to any of the main sources of wellbeing support offered by the University or colleges.

The survey also found that only 18% of students saw tutors as their preferred member of staff to talk to about their mental wellbeing. 31% agreed they’d feel more comfortable speaking to their college nurses and mental health officers, while 21% said they would go to their DoS.

The role of the college tutor is to be “a helpful first point of call for students” according to a guide to college tutoring distributed by the University, and should “provide support, encouragement and constructive feedback” to students. The guide also states that “Tutors should normally be proactive in arranging meetings with students” and “have a valuable role to play in listening actively to students,” but testimony collected by the survey revealed this is not always the case.

One student told Varsity: “My tutor has never once asked how I’m doing, he just asks what I’m up to and what lectures I’ve been to […] There’s never room to comment and in Lent term, he didn’t show up to my meeting, nor did he reply to my email afterwards to re-arrange.”

The student continued: “When my tutor went on sabbatical, the College assigned me my DoS as a temporary tutor […] and he was less helpful, sending us all an email saying ‘reply YES if you’ve got a serious wellbeing concern and NO if you don’t’. If you replied NO, he wouldn’t arrange a meeting, and I don’t think any of us felt comfortable enough to reply YES.”

Another student said: “I have been very lucky with the tutorial system, but it is so clearly flawed in the way it attempts to get full time academics who are overworked and busy to try and deal [with] stressed students’ welfare concerns. It is an outdated system that would not exist anywhere but Cambridge.”

A third student commented: “I think the notion that your tutor is there for wellbeing concerns is more superficial than practicable. My tutor is not someone I feel would understand any mental health issues I might be facing, and was assigned to me on a random basis.”

In response to the results of the investigation, a spokesperson for Student Minds Cambridge, a branch of the student mental health charity, said: “The figures provided sadly do not come as a surprise. I think that in a competitive academic environment such as Cambridge, conversations around mental health are yet to be fully normalised, due to a perceived sense of ‘failure’ surrounding not being able to keep up with work, socialising, and so on. This may explain why people are more comfortable opening up to a designated college wellbeing officer or nurse as opposed to an academic authoritative figure such as a DoS.”

A separate report completed by student services found that there is significant variation between who accesses student services, finding that male, international, postgraduate and/or part-time students were the least likely to access services. It also found that almost 60% of students did not attend the UCS one-at-a-time therapy more than once.

Commenting on this data and Varsity’s survey, the Students’ Union’s (SU) welfare officer, Elleni Eshete, said: “This data suggests further research and action is urgently needed to understand how to best support student mental health in a way that is effective and reaches our most vulnerable members. Especially as numbers of students presenting with mental health problems are expected to rise in the upcoming years.”

The results of the survey come after the SU is urging for more support with student workload to improve mental wellbeing after a University board of scrutiny concluded the University’s review of teaching should make “concrete actions and structural reforms” rather than “simply providing warm words”.

A spokesperson for the University told Varsity that they could not fully learn from the survey, as they did not know how many students took part in it.

“Many students seek support through the University Counselling Service each year, however we understand that barriers can exist. We work to ensure our services are student-focused, inclusive, and accessible – through student focus groups and large-scale surveys, and by making sure messages shared via the collegiate University’s ’Reach Out’ campaign are shaped with student feedback and voices”, they continued.

“Continuous improvement is key, and significant investment through the new Student Mental Health and Wellbeing Plan has led to swifter access to counselling, increased capacity in our support services, and the growth of a network of College wellbeing services and programmes.”