Counselling services

The University provides free, specialist interventions through a professionally staffed and confidential service to students experiencing psychological distress to enable them to achieve their academic and personal goals. 

If you are concerned about the welfare of a student seek our help to ensure that support and treatment is provided as early as possible. 

Additionally the service acts as a specialist resource for information and consultation for those throughout the collegiate University engaged in a broad range of welfare functions, runs a Peer Support Training Programme for students and Junior Deans and delivers targeted training for staff in welfare positions/pastoral roles.

The Counselling Service is accustomed to helping a diverse range of people dealing with a wide range of issues. Learn more about the types of support the team can offer below.

This involves a student working with a counsellor in a brief and focussed way in order to allow a student to make sense of their experiences, conceptualise problems in new ways, and think about how they might move forward from these.

Some problems are more complex and long standing and require further sessions. The aim, however, is to keep counselling efficient and focussed. The counsellor can also help identify where short term psycho-educational workshops, group counselling and/or self-help resources may have a role to play, but this may not be relevant for everyone.

Find out more on the Oxford Students website.

Group counselling provides students with the opportunity to explore how they relate to others and benefit from others’ experiences and support. They are often a more effective form of help than individual counselling for many people.

Groups are open agenda sessions and group members commit to keeping personal knowledge confidential within the group. They are held weekly during term time for an hour and a half.

Find out more on the Oxford Students website.

The service can offer online counselling via Skype to Oxford students not able to access the service for face to face counselling. This includes work with students in this way because they are studying or doing research away from Oxford or have been suspended from their studies. For further information refer to our Online Counselling Information

 

The Counselling Service offers a range of workshops which help students build skills to respond to demands of life at university. They are short-term, structured and agenda led, with between four and 20 participants. Workshop topics change each term, so find out more about current workshops on the Oxford Students website.

 

 

 

As well as working directly with students the Counselling Service supports college and departmental staff responding to the welfare needs of their students. The Link Counsellor Programme pairs a member of counselling staff with a college to act as a link between the service and a college welfare team.

 

Alongside the work of the Link College Counsellors programme the Counselling Service also trains and oversees students who are accepted to volunteer on our Peer Support Programme. This looks to maximise on the effectiveness of reaching out to a peer network to discuss difficulties in the first instance.  Find out more about how we support the work of our Peer Support counsellors.

Mental Health Awareness Training is available for any staff member who may find themselves supporting students in distress with the aim being to enable staff to feel more confident and equipped to manage those situations. The training is ideally delivered to groups of 10 or more individuals, in-house, in departments and colleges.  For further information please contact Dr Ruth Collins. 

Contact us

Counselling Service
3 Worcester Street
Oxford
OX1 2BX
01865 270300
Email: counselling@admin.ox.ac.uk

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