By Professor Peter Mathieson MB BS (Hons), PhD, FRCP, FRCPE, FMedSci
Image by Baim Hanif via Unsplash
Content Warning: mentions of suicide
A university is a people organisation, those people being students, staff, alumni and friends. Ideally, a university should have a strong sense of community. There will be many communities, some small and some large, many overlapping (best friends, classmates, house-mates, sports team or association, programme, School, College, matriculation year, graduation year etc). Everyone should belong somewhere.
So why is it that universities can be very lonely places, where isolation can contribute to adverse mental health outcomes and, very sadly, sometimes to suicides?
There is an analogy with London: a huge city which is densely packed with people and yet said to be one of the loneliest cities in the world (1). How is this possible? If the same is potentially true at the University of Edinburgh, what can we do about this phenomenon?
It is probably a consequence of human nature: maybe we are all too busy, preoccupied with our own worries and needs, respectful of other people’s privacy, embarrassed to make the first move or worried about being shunned for being forward in doing so.
My appeal to everyone in our University community is simple. If you notice someone seeming isolated, lonely or sad: speak to them, offer them the hand of friendship.
If you yourself feel lonely, isolated, scared or even suicidal: talk to someone about it. If you’re a student at the University of Edinburgh and no-one else seems to be listening, send me an e-mail! To ask for help is not a sign of weakness, it is a sign of strength.
Our University has all the ingredients to be a caring, engaged community and in many areas it already is one. However, we know that there are gaps and we know that we can all contribute to filling those gaps. Let’s work together to make it an even more friendly and secure place with an enduring sense of community.
The Edinburgh University Students’ Association is promoting the tagline We are Edinburgh. I like that! Organisations such as Fearlessly are working hard to improve the sense of community here at the University of Edinburgh.
We all want the same thing: for this to be a people-focused university driven by a strong sense of values, championing inclusiveness, friendship, mutual support, pride in our community and committed to maintaining it here in Edinburgh, and also further afield for those who have left us geographically but not in spirit. We are Edinburgh!
Professor Peter Mathieson MB BS (Hons), PhD, FRCP, FRCPE, FMedSci
Professor Peter Mathieson MBBS(Hons)(London), PhD(Cambridge), FRCP(London), FRCPE, FMedSci is Principal and Vice-Chancellor of the University of Edinburgh. He went to a state grammar school in Penzance, Cornwall and was the first member of his family to go to university. He read Medicine at the London Hospital Medical College and qualified with First Class Honours from the University of London in 1983. He was awarded a PhD by the University of Cambridge in 1992 and in 1995 became the foundation Professor of Renal Medicine at the University of Bristol and Honorary Consultant Nephrologist, North Bristol NHS Trust. In 1999, he was elected to Fellowship of the Academy of Medical Sciences and in March 2015 he was awarded Honorary Fellowship of Hughes Hall, Cambridge. Of the various prizes and academic awards that he has received, he is most proud of being voted “Teacher of the Year” by Cambridge medical students in 1992 and being voted “top teacher 2011-12” by Foundation doctors at University Hospitals Bristol.
