Mental Health Officer joins Union roles

Union Council has voted to introduce a new liberation officer, representing students struggling with mental health issues. Appropriate steps will be taken for the position to be created in time for the elections in March. Liberation officers exist in order to represent and campaign for underrepresented students and support the Deputy President for Welfare. Currently there are seven roles. There’s a Disabilities Officer meant to represent the needs of students with disabilities (both physical and mental) but there also are LGBT, Ethics and Environmental, Gender Equality, Interfaith BME, Campaigns, and International officers.

Despite the existence of a role meant to deal with mental health, the paper proposing the introduction of the new role suggests it is not enough. Arian Sadr-Hashemi, chair of Mentality and author of the paper believes that the current role “does not provide appropriate representation for all students with mental health issues”, that its duties are “too broad” and that it is necessary to bring “short term mental health issues [such as] grief and stress” to the Union’s attention.

During her presentation on Tuesday, Sadr-Hashemi said that “we are at a very weird point at mental health, where it’s becoming more acceptable to struggle with mental health issues”, however she stressed that despite positive steps, some mental health issues receive a very different public treatment to others. “We have to push that [sic] all mental health issues are acceptable”. While addressing Council members, she stressed the need to represent all minorities and urged the Union to “keep up”.

The role would provide a point of contact for students wishing to get in touch with the Disability Advisory Service, Departmental Disability Officers and the Mental Health Advice Service. It would also liaise with Mentality (a ICU campaign raising awareness for mental health) to “facilitate engagement of students with mental health issues in Union activity”.

Concerns of the constitutional inclusion in the role description of Mentality as a point of contact were shut down using the LGBT Officer as an example who is constitutionally meant to liaise with Imperial 600 and IQ, imperial’s network for LGBT+ staff and students respectively.

Still there are valid concerns on what happens once the role is created. It’s not uncommon for Liberation Officer positions to remain vacant after the first or even the second round of elections. At the moment, such is the case with the Disabilities Officer. We will have to wait and see whether the Mental Health Officer position proves to be more attractive.