Counselling, Health Advice and Chaplaincy
Explore how we can support your wellbeing, including mental health, counselling and chaplaincy services.
Counselling Service
UAL provides free, confidential short-term counselling to support you with problems that are impacting your studies. Counselling can help with:
- mental health concerns
- course related problems
- low mood and depression
- anxiety and stress
- gender, sexuality and identity
- family and relationship issues
- bereavement
- loneliness and homesickness.
For legal and regulatory reasons, counselling is only available to students who live in the UK.
Appointments with these services are available online or over the phone.
Mental health support
Mental health support starts with an initial assessment with a mental health adviser. They come from a variety of professional backgrounds, including mental health nursing, social work, and occupational therapy. They can support you:
- to manage the impact of your mental health difficulties
- to develop skills and strategies to deal with your difficulties by drawing on a range of evidence-based interventions
- by providing advice and signposting to other services, including help with referrals to statutory mental health services in the UK. This can include NHS Talking Therapies or Community Mental Health Teams.
Appointments with these services are available online or over the phone.
Health support
The Health Advice Service provides advice about any other aspect of health and wellbeing. If you're based in the UK, they can also help you register with a doctor (GP) in the UK.
The service can help with questions or concerns about:
- lifestyle (including alcohol, drugs and smoking)
- healthy eating
- physical wellbeing
- infectious diseases
- sexual health.
Appointments with these services are available online or over the phone.
Full health advice services are available to students who live in the UK. Students who live outside the UK, can access general wellbeing support, including accessing 20-minute wellbeing sessions online and using Togetherall, a free online digital wellbeing support service.
Chaplaincy Service
The Chaplaincy at UAL offers pastoral and spiritual care to students and staff. The chaplains also organise events and activities in relation to faith, spirituality and the arts. Pastoral care is a model of emotional and spiritual support that can be found in many cultures and traditions.
The 2 Anglican chaplains at UAL are part of a wider network of Chaplains that support London universities. As Church of England priests, they draw from the resources of the Anglican tradition, and they interpret these in contemporary contexts. The chaplains also work with advisors from other specific faiths, who students can speak and meet with. This enables them to serve the needs of the varied individuals and communities that make up UAL.
Contact the Chaplaincy Service
The chaplains can provide telephone and email support. They welcome being contacted by people of all faiths, spiritual and religious beliefs, including those who are atheist or agnostic or who do not align themselves with any philosophy.
UAL students are invited to speak to the chaplains about anything which is on their mind at any point during their studies, and the chaplains can also help at times when students are depressed, feeling under pressure, dealing with loss or bereavement or when, for any reason, they feel like they can’t cope.
Contact details for other faith advisors can be found:
- on the University Intranet - search for "faith advisors"
- at artschaplaincy.net
More wellbeing information
Discover more about the Counselling, Health Advice and Chaplaincy services.
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