‘No common cause’ linking five student deaths, says University of Cambridge report
The University of Cambridge responded to the tragedy of five recent student deaths with a statement this week that pointed out that a coroner has declared one to be by suicide while the other four are yet to be investigated.
Prof Graham Virgo, senior pro-vice-chancellor (education), said the university’s managers were “shocked and saddened” by the deaths of five of its students this year.
All the deaths occurred between March and June. The first, of a second-year history student, was in March. Three more students died in May and a fifth in June.
Following the fourth fatality, Prof Virgo said the university, “along with the affected colleges, set up a rapid incident response group with the involvement of local public health colleagues from the local authority and the NHS”.
He added that after the public health-led process and review, “the incident response group was advised that no common cause or clear linkages were evident from the first four deaths”.
The five deaths have caused alarm, receiving national and international coverage.
However, there were few if any warning signs: at the inquest into the history student’s death, Cambridgeshire and Peterborough assistant coroner Simon Milburn reported “absolutely no indication that he was struggling”. The student, who was “on course to finish as one of the most accomplished students in his year”, had no history of mental health problems and was not in contact with his college counselling service.
On Monday (July 11) Cambridge Students’ Union (SU), the student-led organisation, issued its own statement.
“It’s wrong to speculate on the circumstances surrounding each student’s death, but we should not shy away from the fact that there is a student mental health crisis at Cambridge,” it said.
Cambridge SU president Zak Coleman told the Cambridge Independent: “If there were no warning signs, perhaps it is because there were no proactive systems ie asking questions at start of term, such as ‘how are you?’, ‘are you OK?’.”
Recent research by the Humen mental health charity (for men) shows that the pandemic has had a lasting effect in young men’s experience of university, with 47 per cent of students reporting that their university experience has been negatively impacted since the first lockdown in March 2020.
Prof Virgo’s statement insisted that the university is heavily invested in mental health for its students, commenting that “nothing is more important than the safety of our students”.
He noted that students have access to three types of support – from the university, from their college, and from the NHS.
He added: “In 2020, we launched the development of a new strategy and action plan to enhance the support for mental health and wellbeing already available for students across the collegiate university. Investment is rising to over £5m per year.”
The university also tracks its students’ wellbeing: its central mental health service was accessed by 2,123 students in 2021 and that year 453 students used college-based services. In 2017 the figures were 1,655 and 136 respectively in 2017 (a 28 per cent increase for the university and a 233 per cent increase for colleges between 2017 and 2021).
- If you’re in trouble with your wellbeing or mental health, call Samaritans for free on 116 123, email jo@samaritans.org, or visit www.samaritans.org to find your nearest branch.