More often than not we are faced with mental health issues that are not at the extreme end of the spectrum (for example: anxiety, mild depression).

However, we did face a challenge where a student attempted suicide a few weeks before the trip, but the student still wanted to come on the trip. The trip was to a very remote location, at least 5 hours away from the nearest hospital. If the student made an attempt on their life whilst at the location we would have struggled to get the student to the hospital. We also considered the additional stressors of going on fieldwork because although a lot of students enjoy fieldwork it is often seen as a stressful aspect of their degree course. In this instance we decided it was not appropriate for the student to attend the trip and this decision was supported by all the risk assessments we made and we had to bring in a lot of people to make this decision. It wasn’t an easy decision to say to the student they could not attend the trip, but it is our duty to protect and safeguard our students.