Introducing… Athena Minds.

The mental health of a student is, perhaps, the most important aspect of their holistic educational wellbeing. Departures from good mental health can be unbearably distressing and unpleasant for a student, as well as having a significant negative impact on academic attainment, potentially compromising the hard work that a student has put in towards achieving their academic goals.

At Athena, we believe that both mental health and academic support can work in tandem, in order to ensure a student’s overall contentment, whilst also optimising their academic progress.

Despite this, the emphasis of schools, and the education system in general, is biased in favour of academic achievement over that of mental wellbeing. The intellectual and social challenges that academic institutions place on the student, in conjunction with potential home-life scenarios, test the mental health of every student.

Everybody is born with a different set of specific predispositions to certain mental health problems, and every student has a unique ‘portfolio’ of environmental factors that influence their mental wellbeing. Therefore, everyone responds to, and copes with, their educational experience differently and yet, the exam ‘hurdles’ and educational procedure remains the same for the vast majority of people.

Emerging from a COVID-19 lockdown brings with it its own complement of mental health challenges. This can raise the baseline of a student’s anxiety, making common challenges, such as examinations, even more difficult to manage.

It is the role of Athena Minds to provide emotional support for students, and to implement strategies to help improve mental wellbeing. We match clients with mentors, counsellors and chartered psychologists, taking into account clients’ needs and desires. We also utilise educational therapists, who can assess students and recommend appropriate strategies, along with overseeing any treatment procedures and coordinating with schools / universities to assess treatment efficacy.

Mental health issues manifest very broadly: some can be clearly visible and others difficult to detect; a coping mechanism for one person’s panic attack could be the trigger of someone else’s. At Athena Minds, we handle every request seriously, sensitively and confidentially, with no problem being too small to be discussed and hopefully remedied.