Frequently Asked Questions
If you find yourself struggling with your mental health or wellbeing while at university, you won’t have to manage it on your own. You can reach out for support with anything that affects your ability to study or enjoy life at Northumbria — whether it’s worries about relationships, questions around sexuality or gender, friendship difficulties, feeling anxious or isolated, stress, low mood, or even homesickness. Whatever you’re dealing with, support is here for you.
Our specialist team offer a range of short term, brief, therapeutic and psychoeducational interventions to help you explore any difficulties, develop coping strategies, and help you to get back on track with your studies. Support can be one-to-one with a practitioner whether in person, online or by telephone; through our psychoeducational workshops; or online via our guided CBT self-help programmes.
Interventions are tailored to the needs of the student and can include, single session wellbeing plans, short term counselling, low intensity CBT, practical symptom management, psychoeducation, and where appropriate support to access further psychological therapies and support via the NHS and secondary care.
We also work closely with other specialist teams at the University to ensure students who have a mental health diagnosis access the support and adjustments they might need whilst studying.
Please see our overview of mental health and wellbeing support.
Our mental health and wellbeing specialists are multidisciplinary, experienced practitioners from a range of mental health backgrounds. This includes professionally qualified counsellors, psychological wellbeing practitioners (low-intensity CBT therapists), mental health nurses and social workers.
When you join Northumbria you can register for one-to-one support. Once your registration form is received, a member of the team will contact you within two working days with an offer of support. You’ll first have a short telephone appointment with a practitioner. This conversation helps us understand your needs and decide which type of support will be most helpful for you. Depending on what is recommended, there may be a waiting period, as waiting times for therapeutic support can vary throughout the academic year. It’s important to know that this service is not an emergency or crisis service and once at University, students can access urgent guidance via Ask4Help Online on their Student Portal.
No, this service is free for all UK based Northumbria University students.
We want you to feel completely safe discussing sensitive or personal issues, which is why we offer a strictly confidential service. Nothing you share — including the content of your sessions — will be passed on without your permission.
The only time we may need to share information without your consent is if there is a serious concern that you or someone else is at risk of significant harm, or if we are legally required to do so by a court order. Even in these situations, we will always do our best to keep you informed about what information is being shared and with whom.
Sometimes it can be helpful for us to work with others on your behalf, such as your GP or another healthcare provider. If this would support your wellbeing, we would only proceed with your agreement, and your practitioner would discuss everything with you openly.
If you have ongoing mental health challenges that may require additional adjustments for your studies, you can contact our Accessibility Team. They can help put appropriate support and reasonable adjustments in place.
If you have any queries regarding mental health and wellbeing support at Northumbria that have not been answered on our web pages, you can contact Ask4Help by telephoning 0191 227 4646.
Current students: Please submit an enquiry via Ask4Help Online on your Student Portal.
