Supporting students in crisis or distress

This section contains the essential information you need to support a student who may be at risk or in distress, including concerns about suicidal thoughts and/or self harm.  

This section also includes information about third party disclosures. 

Concerns about the immediate wellbeing of a student? 

It can be very worrying and stressful listening to a student disclosing they are thinking about suicide, have already tried to take their life and/or are sharing self harm information with you.   

If you feel able to and the student is willing to talk with you, try and get as much information as possible from them including; 

• What their intentions are, do they have an immediate plan to harm themselves (or anyone else)? 
• Do they have the means to carry out their plan e.g., if they mention tablets, do they have anything with them? 
• Have they told anyone else about their intentions? 

Once you have whatever information you have been able to gather and don’t worry if it is not much – follow the duty pathway.  This will help guide you on what the next steps with staff available to talk through your concerns and take whatever next steps are necessary.  Please know that you do not and are not expected to hold and deal with such disclosures on your own.  Experienced staff who manage the Duty Pathway are there to help.  Here is the Duty Pathway and the contact details (link coming soon)

Concerns about the behaviour of a student? 

This may include a student displaying concerning behaviours, being aggressive, making threats or harassing other students/members of staff.   

The behaviours may be of a hatred or intolerance of groups of people, threatening violence against themselves or others (including terrorism- related).  

If you have any concerns, please get in touch via the Duty Pathway

Concerns about a students wellbeing - Third party disclosures 

If you receive contact from a parent/guardian or student raising concerns about the immediate wellbeing of another student, advise them to contact the Police directly, 999 if they feel the person is at imminent risk.  The need for this is to ensure the person gets the urgent response that may be needed.  Making a report to the University for a service to follow up can delay help being received. 

If the person does not feel there is an immediate risk, they are concerned for their wellbeing (including if a student is reported missing) provide them with the Duty Pathway email address and ask them to get in touch with the Duty team.  This saves time from you taking all the information, passing it on and then having to relay any response.   

Duty Pathway email: SCWDuty@leeds.ac.uk