There has been much discussion about the increase in mental health difficulty post-lockdown: an article in the BMJ predicts a “tsunami of distress”. And certainly, we both anticipate that students will return with a range of difficulties from moderate anxiety and depression to acute mental ill health.
Our AoC working group on mental health and wellbeing has identified that the key to unlocking this next phase is ensuring staff are ready and have the support to thrive post-lockdown. Recent announcements from government from the DfE expert advisory panel on staff wellbeing supported this approach.
As colleges prepare to open, we are aware that we are still in the midst of the pandemic and have not yet reached a recovery phase. What measures can we put in place to equip our staff to manage the psychological impact of the crisis and deal effectively with students?
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Psychological PPE
One place we can learn key lessons from is the experience of NHS Nightingale in the preparation of the workforce. An innovative programme entitled Psychological PPE was devised by a small team under the leadership of Dr Krishna Bakhai and Chloe Kitto, a GP registrar and OT respectively. They drew from the expertise of the BPS Covid-19 staff wellbeing group and the UCL covid trauma response working group. They devised training to prepare staff for the psychological demands of working in a high-risk field hospital and delivered it through volunteers, including using local college staff, facilitating psychologically informed groups.
Key findings showed that preparedness was essential in protecting staff from becoming overwhelmed. Participants reflected upon their own self-care strategies, worked on recognising their personal stress response; anticipated the challenges, explored flexible adjustments to strategies to fit changing circumstances and committed to supporting colleagues. Participants in the training valued the opportunity to take stock and think about the strategies that sustain them when under pressure. They were invited to create an on-going, living document to plan this when self-care can so often go out of the window.
Recent discussions between colleges and the Nightingale leads on the NHS experience led to speculation on its applicability to other settings. Anxiety about a workforces’ capacity to cope psychologically is not specific to the NHS, fear of contagion and for the wellbeing of loved ones, distress induced by the uncertainty of the times is universal.
Protecting staff from emotional hazards
Staff in education have additional challenges of managing distress while attending to the core task of teaching and learning. Our workforce is subjected to criticism by a recently hostile media, ignoring the immense task undertaken by staff to transform course delivery, creating an illusion of a workshy population unwilling to pull their weight. Staff in colleges are noticeably entering the summer break exhausted, feeling unsupported by the public and wary of the challenges ahead. Equipping staff with psychological PPE to protect from the emotional hazards must be a priority.
We are now working on a version for education which will be swiftly piloted and evaluated to ensure efficacy followed by a train the trainer programme. In the meantime, thinking in colleges about how we use the framing of psychological PPE to practically equip our staff feels both urgent and critical to future success. Undoubtedly this is now a marathon not a sprint, care of our staff will be essential in order to create safe and psychologically informed environments in September in which students can thrive.
Jane Darougar is college counsellor at Leyton Sixth Form College and mental health trainer with the Charlie Waller Memorial Trust. Stuart Rimmer is chief executive and principal at East Coast College and chair of AoC policy group for mental health.
