Chancellors of French-speaking universities sounded the alarm on Tuesday about many students' worsening mental health, calling on public authorities to provide more support to fund their care.
"Mental health problems among students are even greater than during the health crisis. Our social services are overflowing!" warned ULB chancellor and President of the French-speaking Chancellors' Council (CRef), Annemie Schaus, at a press conference on Tuesday.
A study carried out in 2021 at the height of the Covid pandemic and during lockdown showed that 50% of students experienced symptoms of anxiety and 55% signs of depression. Two years on, however, despite the fading of the virus, students' mental health has not improved – it has, in fact, worsened.
"We are witnessing a 'delay effect' that is well known in psychogy," explained ULiège chancellor and professor of psychology, Anne-Sophie Nyssen. "The Covid crisis exacerbated already existing problems, and many students have completely decompensated," she lamented.
CRef notes that these problems are mainly found among new university students. During the pandemic, these students were deprived of school, and contact with other young people as a result. They were hampered in their socialisation and did not have the opportunity to build a strong social network around them.
Moreover, the social, international and environmental context did not help them to view life with optimism either.
'Molotov cocktail' for young people
"They were marked by the terrorist attacks 10 years ago. Then there were the climate protests, which came to nothing. Then there was Covid, the war in Ukraine and now all these forest fires," Schaus explains. "For young people, it is a real Molotov cocktail, to which we have to add the rise in job insecurity and the need for some to work (alongside their studies)."
As a result, the number of requests for psychological support services within universities is rising sharply. At ULiège, for example, the number of requests for individual help from students has risen from 60 to 400 in the space of just a few years, the university chancellor says.
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During the Covid crisis, the French Community government released additional resources to provide psychological assistance. While these resources helped to improve the support systems, they have been unable to "correct the historical deficit in the provision of care for unhappiness and respond to the chronic increase in demand", according to CRef.
Furthermore, these resources are often only of a temporary nature (even if they are renewed), which does not allow universities to engage in a "long-term prevention and follow-up policy", the chancellors deplore.
