Know

• Who holds the coordinating role for pastoral care for a student?
• What is your role supporting pastoral care?
• Where are your boundaries?
• Limits to confidentiality
• Who to call, where to find more information

Communicate

• Your role, their supervisor and others in the department
• There are many services, networks and helpful people around a student. As autonomous adults, they need to choose to connect as needed
• Students are entitled to use university and other services including support
  
  • Nothing is too small or big
  • Earlier is easier but anytime is fine
• Not knowing how/who/where..
  
  • Is expected and normal
  • Move from “I don't know it therefore it doesn't exist” to “What do I do next to find out?” ie “How do I learn and grow?”

Be interested: students are learning the material, learning to learn, learning about themselves and still have life going on so it is expected and normal to have emotions and find difficulties to overcome and this will intersect with academic learning.

Centre the student, keep boundaries: students are competent adults with agency, responsible for their own lives and wellbeing. You can care but that doesn't mean taking on other people’s problems yourself. What can they do next to take care of themselves, learn and grow?

Actively listen: see how they see things, don't jump in with solutions. Sometimes people just need a listening ear and that is valuable

Signpost: if you feel there might be risk or if a student is distressed see the webpages In Crisis Now and Help and Support.

Find further links in the Signposting section below.

Consult: with your colleagues or with the Open Door team.

Always take care of yourself. “Put your own oxygen mask on first” and look after yourself after an emotionally difficult encounter. Open Door is also here to support PGRs, and GTAs on contract can also access the staff Employee Assist service or Occupational Health. 

Appreciate how helpful it is to have you here!

Immediate danger

Call 999 for emergency services - or for the Campus Safety team call 01904 32 3333 or use the Safezone app.

Other risks

If you feel there may be some risk, let Open Door know - the team will evaluate and reach out as needed. You can email opendoor@york.ac.uk or telephone 01904 322140.

Confidentiality

It is fine to share information with the Open Door team as appropriate professionals within the same organisation if you feel there might be a risk: this is a reasonable and proportionate breaking of confidentiality.

Other issues

For any issue, big or small, please consider:

• Open Door: students can self-refer
• Departmental Student Wellbeing Officer who can reach out
• Student's GP (General Practitioner) who they can contact to access NHS psychological services
• The Advice A-Z which has information on lots of common issues affecting students

Encourage students to look for whatever they need: just because they don't know of it doesn't mean it doesn't exist. You don't need to do this for them most of the time. The student health and wellbeing pages have suggestions for resources, as do the NHS.

Remind students to connect with support they already know about - this might be friends, family, someone in their college. Open Door and others can discuss with them how to create and nurture such networks.

You can signpost students to advice about lots of common issues in the Advice A-Z. We've covered some in detail below. 

Anxiety about seminars

• How do I deal with awkward silences?
• What if I don’t know something? What if I say the wrong thing, look stupid?
• What if people judge me?
• Do I fit in? Is my language good enough?
• I have missed some, can I come back in?

Some of these can be reframed by seeing the seminar as a place to learn and refine ideas so you’d expect to not know the material perfectly and be able to express it.

Negative self-talk, taking things to heart, worst case thinking

It can be easy when stressed to get into a spiral of only thinking of the worst case and taking a small and limited problem and extrapolating it to failure. 
Sometimes self-calming and writing or speaking out the chain of thinking can allow more critical thinking and risk analysis - what might go well? what is likely? What would a positive coach say?

Overwhelm

When more stressed it can be difficult to prioritise issues or schedule: it can feel like everything is equally big and needs to happen immediately. Time to calm and focus and plan can be a good use of time.

Perfectionism

Many people here have been good at what they do and have gained praise and recognition for it, or have high hopes and expectations for themselves or pressure from family or others. It can sometimes therefore feel like any failure must be avoided or work must be perfect.

One way of reframing is about expecting and welcoming a learning process of improvement with useful feedback and being able to get an overview of what is "good enough" for each task to reach goals bigger than one task. It can be helpful to see that people who are further along in learning and career also make mistakes and learn.

Procrastination

"I can avoid feelings about this piece of work for now." Can be related to perfectionism and having an inner critic. Can sometimes be about getting started rather than work itself being hard. Sometimes looking ahead to one's future self can help, or being in a good working environment perhaps with others around.

• Ayers, Zoe J. (2022) Managing your Mental Health during your PhD: A Survival Guide. Springer
• Hunt, A (2021) Surviving and thriving at university: realistic study advice from a lecturer of 30+ years. Independently published. 
• Schwartz, H. L (ed.) (2012)  Interpersonal Boundaries in Teaching and Learning. New Directions in Teaching and Learning 131. Jossey-Bass.

• Nic Streafield (Director of Student Life and Wellbeing) and Open Door have been delivering sessions to departments and schools on Responding to Students in Distress, working with Faculties. Check with your department/school to see if a session has been scheduled. 
• Other ideas are being developed by Open Door as part of a wider project on enhancing support for students at York. 
• Open Door and the Academic Quality and Development Team are also planning to deliver bespoke training for GTAs from 2024/25, which will be announced via the GTA Community site.