At UTC, stu­dent health and pre­ven­tive med­i­cine are tak­en very seri­ous­ly. In fact, there is a ded­i­cat­ed ser­vice staffed with health pro­fes­sion­als con­stant­ly avail­able and acces­si­ble free of charge. They include a nurse, a psy­chol­o­gist, a gen­er­al prac­ti­tion­er and a stu­dent health relay coordinator.

Alice Hoogen­doorn-Marichez is a gen­er­al prac­ti­tion­er at UTC. As a part-time doc­tor in the pre­ven­tive med­i­cine depart­ment, she has a num­ber of roles to ful­fil in addi­tion to her tra­di­tion­al duties, such as receiv­ing con­sult­ing stu­dents at their request (phys­i­cal health, men­tal health, refer­ral to the department’s psy­chol­o­gist or to exter­nal psy­chol­o­gists, spe­cial­ized inter­views for advice or guid­ance (diet, sex­u­al­i­ty, STIs, sleep, etc.). «I take charge of pro­vid­ing med­ical advice fol­low­ing treat­ment and refer­ral by the department’s nurse, Dominique Albanese, as well as pre­ven­tive med­ical vis­its in par­al­lel with pre­ven­tive nurs­ing inter­views. At the start of each aca­d­e­m­ic year, there are slots ded­i­cat­ed exclu­sive­ly for con­sul­ta­tions, in con­nec­tion with requests for cer­tifi­cates of non-counter-indi­ca­tion in regard to the prac­tice of leisure sports. I’m also an cer­ti­fied CDAPH (com­mis­sion for hand­i­capped per­sons) doc­tor, pro­vid­ing med­ical advice on spe­cial exam arrange­ments for stu­dents with dis­abil­i­ties. I’m also a mem­ber of the UTC’s unit fight­ing sex­ist and sex­u­al vio­lence against stu­dents and I also pro­vide men­tal health first aid train­ing for staff and stu­dents,» explains the doc­tor, who also runs aware­ness­rais­ing mod­ules on cer­tain top­ics for the Etu­di­ants Relais San­té (ERS Health Relay), who play a key role in pre­ven­tion by and for peers, and act as a link between the pre­ven­tive med­i­cine ser­vice and students.

Drugs, alcohol and virtual reality

«In 2023, we also ten­dered fol­low­ing an ARS call for projects on the pre­ven­tion of addic­tive behav­iours among stu­dents. We chose to work on alco­hol, cannabis, cocaine and nitrous oxide, with the help of an addic­tol­o­gist and a graph­ic design­er. From Sep­tem­ber onwards, we shall be pre­sent­ing stu­dents with a cam­paign to raise aware­ness of the harm­ful effects of alco­hol, using shock­ing vir­tu­al real­i­ty videos,» says ERS coor­di­na­tor San­dra Morineau, who is also work­ing with stu­dents on an escape game on the sub­ject of nitrous oxide and on the prepa­ra­tion of a party-goer’s kit, to be hand­ed out dur­ing matric­u­la­tion induc­tion, which will include glass pro­tec­tion and breathal­y­sers. «To broad­en our pre­ven­tive actions, we are for­tu­nate enough to ben­e­fit from stu­dent jobs financed by the Hauts-de- France region: Stu­dent Health Relays, super­vised by the ERS coor­di­na­tor, under the respon­si­bil­i­ty of the pre­ven­tive med­i­cine depart­ment. Through the ERS, a col­lec­tive pre­ven­tion approach has been devel­oped over time. For harm reduc­tion, we already have links with exter­nal struc­tures such as SATO, cf. sato-picardie.fr) and the French nation­al addic­tion association.

The “MPSL” (Master plan for improving student life at UTC, 2024–2028) as a guideline

Alice Hoogen­doorn-Marichez nat­u­ral­ly took part in the prepara­to­ry meet­ings and work­ing groups to draw up the MPSL “mas­ter plan for improv­ing stu­dent life”. She was appoint­ed pilot for ambi­tion 1–1 of axis 1, enti­tled «Improv­ing pre­ven­tion and access to care, and help­ing stu­dents to take charge of their own health», and all the mem­bers of the pre­ven­tive med­i­cine depart­ment are co-pilots for oth­er points of the MPSL, phys­i­cal and sports activ­i­ties, or the pro­mo­tion of equal­i­ty, respect and inclu­sive­ness in all aspects of stu­dent life,» stress­es the doc­tor, for whom each mem­ber of the depart­ment has a par­tic­u­lar role to play in stu­dent life, and there­fore like­wise in the MPSL. One of its objec­tives is to empha­size «the impor­tance of tak­ing care of one­self» in a gen­er­al sense and there­after to focus on more spe­cif­ic sub­jects such as addic­tion pre­ven­tion and harm reduc­tion in par­ty-going environments.

Mental health taken into account appropriately

Men­tal health has always been an impor­tant issue at UTC, even before the intro­duc­tion of the MPSL — which will help to raise the pro­file of what already exists, and also enable the devel­op­ment of oth­er projects around stu­dents’ men­tal health, such as the pre­sen­ta­tion of the department’s psy­chol­o­gist and the med­ical depart­ment at the start of each aca­d­e­m­ic year.

The psy­chol­o­gist pro­vides free, con­fi­den­tial con­sul­ta­tions, with the pos­si­bil­i­ty of tele­phone inter­pre­ta­tion to over­come lan­guage bar­ri­ers, plus remote fol­low-up when stu­dents leave Com­pieg­ne for intern­ships or abroad, so as not to inter­rupt fol­low-up. She also pro­vides var­i­ous psy­cho­log­i­cal assess­ments, which are cost­ly if car­ried out in pri­vate prac­tice, and ‘assertive­ness’ work­shops. These are full-time con­sul­ta­tions for the clin­i­cal psy­chol­o­gist, with over 1 200 appoint­ments each aca­d­e­m­ic year.

The aim is also to facil­i­tate direct access to the psy­chol­o­gist for stu­dents, thanks to the Doc­tolib inter­net plat­form and the pos­si­bil­i­ty of set­ting up in-house psy­chother­a­py by the psy­chol­o­gist too. «The stu­dent can con­sult the uni­ver­si­ty psy­chol­o­gist for any type of dif­fi­cul­ty: malaise, stress, per­son­al or fam­i­ly prob­lems, anxiety…

There is also exten­sive liai­son work with oth­er men­tal health struc­tures or gen­er­al prac­ti­tion­ers, psy­chi­a­trists and neu­ro-psy­chol­o­gists for some­times dupli­cate fol­low-ups. At the start of each semes­ter, the ERS also pro­vides train­ing on stress and the help­ing rela­tion­ship, to give peers the keys to direct­ing stu­dents in dif­fi­cul­ty towards a health pro­fes­sion­al,» points out psy­chol­o­gist Cather­ine Car­pen­tier, who also works with the local men­tal health com­mit­tee of the Com­pieg­ne conur­ba­tion and the Cen­tre Médi­co Psychologique.

KD