Crisis Has Turned Our Students Into A Lost Generation

‘I was so optimistic but now I regret attending university’

- Yasmin Al-najar

Lockdown may be ending, but there is one class of people in Britain whose worries are far from over. Every night thousands of students lie awake tormented with worries about their present and questions about their future. They fear unfulfilled potential and feel as if their life is spinning out of their control.

Being socially isolated and cut off from vital academic and mental health support, students feel that they are the lost and forgotten generation.

“Mentally destroying” is how Nora Hashad, 23-year-old tourism management final year student at Manchester Metropolitan University, described her worries about her future and the pressure of her studies. “I’m depressed from the moment I wake up and get anxiety just before bed. I am unable to get out of bed most of the time and have cried almost on a daily basis” she told me.

Mental health charity, Mind, reported that 73 per cent of university students said that their mental health declined during lockdown last year.