Look After Your Mate

The SOAS Access, Participation and Student Success (APSS) team, partnered with Student Minds, the UK's student mental health charity to offer the Look After Your Mate project to SOAS students.

Friends are often the first person that we talk to when we are having a difficult time.

Most students talk to their friends when they are having a tough time. We can talk to friends in confidence and they help us to keep challenges in perspective. The truth is that although university can be awesome, life’s curveballs still get thrown at us and in these situations we really need our mates to be there for us.

Friendship can play a key role in helping someone live with or recover from any difficulties they are facing. But it can be hard to know what to say when a mate is struggling.

Look After Your Mate Ambassadors are students who are looking to support friends or peers at university who may be struggling with their mental health.  

Being a Look After Your Mate Ambassador involves:

• being available for one-to-one conversations with your friends and peers
• thinking about where and when you’d like to talk and spend a little bit of time preparing for the conversation
• supporting your mate consider different solutions or possibilities
• keeping in touch afterwards
• organising and/or attending social events together

Check the Look After Your Mate Guide (PDF, 1.67MB) produced by Student Minds for more details.

Applications are now open for Look After Your Mate Ambassadors. Students wishing to apply are asked to complete the registration form.  

The deadline for applications is Monday 1 May 2023.

Successful applicants will be invited to a training session, scheduled for Friday 5 May, 10:00am-1:00pm on SOAS Campus. The session will give you the skills, knowledge and confidence to support these individuals, whilst looking after your own mental health too. 

The workshops will include: 

• Understanding mental health, the challenges and what support is available. 
• How to support a friend or colleague experiencing difficulties. 
• How to start a conversation.
• Signposting to further support.
• Understanding your own wellbeing and how to look after yourself.

If you would like more information, please contact st92@soas.ac.uk or ra40@soas.ac.uk.

It's important that whilst caring for others, you also remember your own health and make sure to look after yourself too. The training and follow-up sessions will provide you with the tools to enable you to take care of yourself whilst supporting your friends.

By the end of the training you will have developed:

• confidence to support your friends 
• knowledge of services available 
• understanding of how to support your own wellbeing