Supporting Students
As a staff member at a University or College, you are uniquely placed as a point of contact and a supporter for students who are struggling with grief. Always remember that grief is personal, so there is no one answer to the question of how to best support a grieving student.
Signs of grief can include a decreased appetite, difficulty sleeping, a decreased ability to concentrate, increased sadness, and social withdrawal. You should aim to be understanding and tolerant of these reactions. Do not force students to share their feelings with others, including their peers if they do not feel comfortable. Provide them with opportunities to share their feelings privately, but do not expect students to open up to you.
An academic study in 2021, conducted by interviewing Australian students who had suffered a bereavement, found that peer support can be very helpful – there may be a bereavement group at college/university that your student welfare service can tell you about, or you could think about establishing one yourself. Students are far more likely to seek informal support from peers than formal support from counsellors or professionals.
The study also emphasised the importance of universities providing widely available and appropriate resources to students. To better assist bereaved university students, the material should be catered to peers and/or family. However, in the absence of informal help, professional resources should also be available, and clinicians should focus on friends and family to facilitate support for the bereaved student.
Always remember that any bereaved student may or may nor fit into any model of grief that you have read. Individuals do not always follow a set path to “recovering” from a bereavement, with some journeys taking years, or never finishing at all. This is completely normal, and not reflective of bereavement strategies being successful or not. Trying to fit models of grief (such as the five-stages model) onto every individual is a recipe for frustration and increased mental suffering.
Grief can also be a chance for personal growth. This can be seen through changes in self-perception and philosophical attitudes towards life. Students and young adults often report that they try to adapt values and beliefs that they feel were important to their loved one. This can be doubly true at university, which is already a time of self-discovery and growth.
If you feel that a bereaved student requires more support than you or others at the university can provide then it might be best to recommend professional grief therapy. There are lots of bereavement support and grief counselling organisations in the UK than can help people with different types of loss.