Student Mental Health Services at the UvA
By Korina Lorenz | Culture | February 26, 2025
Cover Illustration: Silhouette of person standing on metal dock, Amsterdam, Netherlands @June 24, 2016. Stijn te Strake / Unsplash
Is the University of Amsterdam doing enough for its students’ mental health? Reporter Korina Lorenz breaks down the support offered by the university and contrasts it with a student initiative, called All Ears.
UvA’s Mental Health Resources
Studying at a university comes with an inevitable dose of stress. Whether one is just starting university and struggling with finding housing, adjusting to a new social environment, or in the middle of one’s studies and balancing deadlines, student life is dynamic and often demanding. Such circumstances may take a toll on one’s mental health, and the universities are responsible for offering support and resources to their students in dealing with such stressors.
The University of Amsterdam (UvA) has a page dedicated to mental health, which provides an exhaustive overview of the resources they offer to aid students in navigating such a stressful environment. The website lists a study advisor in case one needs advice on their program, a student psychologist to turn to in the event of personal issues getting in the way of their studies, and a confidential advisor to report campus-related inappropriate behavior to. The official UvA site on student psychologists provides information regarding the kind of workshops, support groups, and limited one-on-one consultations with one of the university’s psychologists, all tightly related to issues affecting one’s academic performance. In case the problem is not directly impeding academic performance, or after the one-on-one session count runs out, a person is urged to contact their GP and get a referral for a psychologist.
Considering the number of students at the UvA and the variety of challenges students face on a day-to-day level, it would be legitimate to question whether the UvA is doing enough to promote and support students’ mental health. Some feel like more substantial support is needed. One international student pursuing a bachelor’s in psychology at the UvA expressed: “For instance with the student psychologist, I think it was nice to have someone to talk to and the psychologist was nice. I just think that there was not much you could do. It was sort of like a very temporary painkiller if that makes sense. You can only go really if you have a very temporary thing, that you have very mild symptoms and you just need a little bit of support.”
Comparing UvA and Durham University
Another issue brought up, apart from the efficacy of support when it comes to everyday challenges, was the lack of promotion of the resources available to students. Mariam Sali, a third-year psychology student at Durham University (DU), who transferred from the UvA after her first year reflects on her experiences when she studied at the UvA: “I think there was not enough awareness and advertisement of places or people you can reach out to within the university. I think there was no balance really between what students needed and what was being made available to the students, or at least what was being shown as available to students.”
When comparing the approach of the UvA and DU to tackling student mental health issues, the differences are striking. “[DU] has a number of different helplines, support systems, and counseling systems; there is also an academic advisor you can go to similar to UvA. But also every college has its own welfare officer that you go to its own helpline, and then every society has its welfare officer. The university will train the welfare officers for this job and, as opposed to UvA, you see there is more funding allocated to different mental health-based initiatives. I think there’s a lot of them here in Durham and there’s a lot of time allocated to training them up and making sure that they’re available and supportive instead of just having something for the sake of having them. DU is more involved in it I think,” Mariam states.
Though DU has more substructures, such as colleges and societies, the range of available support is nonetheless more diverse and covers any problem that a student might have, not just those directly impeding one’s studies. Accordingly, the British university appears more approachable when it comes to asking for help. This shows that there is a way to make support more accessible and open for students regardless of the nature of their problems, for example by introducing more varied support systems or subdividing them by faculties.
An idea the international psychology student shared concerns better guidance towards other mental health resources. “If the student psychologist helps you, they are like ‘We helped you until here because the resources only allow us to do this.’ But maybe making a plan on how to refer [the students] to the right help, or hold their hand a little more would help. Because especially if a student is struggling with a mental health disorder, it’s very daunting to go through all of that alone. It’s not taken into account that doing all of this work yourself to access health care is a lot when you’re already low on motivation. ”
A general consensus seems to be that – apart from the sole better promotion of existing resources – a more extensive top-down change of policy is important, such as widening the scope of support that the existing sources provide and making them more accessible. As Mariam states: “There is more to [creating a] support system than ‘Here’s our resources, here’s how to use them.’ It is about the things that are implicitly embedded in the system that makes it easier for students to feel comfortable mentally.”
The Role of Student-Led Initiatives: All Ears
The inaccessibility of mental health at the UvA has also led some students to take the matter into their own hands, creating student-led initiatives rather than petitioning for the slow-paced process of top-down policy change. Out of the depths of COVID times sprung the project All Ears, aiming to provide a listening ear to students grappling with a rapid shift of pace that the pandemic imposed. Founded by Merel Roseboom and Elin Swaan in 2021, All Ears is an initiative “for students, by UvA psychology students,” as their webpage indicates. Via an online platform, students can either call or chat anonymously with All Ears volunteers consisting strictly of UvA psychology students in their second year or higher, who have passed courses instructing on active listening and therapy skills, with many of them going on to specialize in clinical psychology.
As Maria Tzevelekaki, a fourth-year psychology student at the UvA and a current board member at All Ears states: “We’re offering a listening ear to anyone who has access to our platforms, and it could be from something like an everyday issue or a struggle that someone has, to something heavier. At the same time, because the volunteers are not trained psychologists, they do not give advice or therapy. They are there to listen and have a conversation with the person who is contacting us, and they’re also trained to provide the appropriate resources if needed so that the person can get the appropriate help.”
All Ears fills the gap that exists between getting professional help or study-related workshops on campus, and getting help with everyday struggles that do not qualify under the UvA’s rigid “study-related rule.” Additionally, they are the only mental health support system available immediately. As opposed to scheduling appointments with psychologists, a student in need of a conversation can chat or call All Ears volunteers whenever, as they are open from 10 a.m. to 8 p.m. When first starting out in 2021, the initiative was financially supported by the UvA.
In the last couple of years, the financial tides have shifted, and the UvA decided abruptly not to extend the funding necessary for All Ears to maintain the platform, while still promoting it on their mental health webpage. Considering that numerous students imply that the UvA is lacking in mental health capacities, financially enabling All Ears’ online platform to run would be a way to start addressing this critical gap.
“Last year, we had funding from an external source, Social Run, a company interested in uplifting initiatives such as ours. But this year, we struggled a lot to find funding. Right now, we’ve opened a GoFundMe, and we’re hoping that with the support of students and staff and people who know about All Ears, we will be able to continue helping students” states Maria. All Ears is the only helpline platform operating at the UvA, but due to the unexpected halt in university financial support, the initiative might be obliged to end its services.
Amid everyday pressures and challenges that UvA students face, there is more improvement that could be done by the university itself in providing appropriate help. The aforementioned problems generate a sentiment of dissatisfaction on campus, with multiple students feeling like their problems are overlooked. While All Ears exists as a much-needed alternative helping students tackle everyday psychological issues, such a platform being voluntarily run by students themselves should be a warning sign to the UvA that immediate change in their approach towards student mental health is required. Such adjustments could refer to both larger-scale policy change on campus and a demonstration of commitment to supporting student-led initiatives. For mental health support on campus to become more accessible, the UvA must follow in their own students’ footsteps and join them in listening to students’ needs.
Korina Lorenz is a university student in Amsterdam. The views expressed here are not necessarily those of The Amsterdammer.
