One of the issues with the suc­ces­sive lock­downs decid­ed over the last few months is how to main­tain­ing good phys­i­cal and, above all, psy­cho­log­i­cal fit­ness. From the tem­po­rary low­er­ing of vital­i­ty and phys­i­cal con­di­tion to the occa­sion­al minor bout of depres­sion, these peri­ods of forced iso­la­tion are hav­ing an impact on the psy­cho­log­i­cal health of the students. 

“With my friends, we have all expe­ri­enced a spot of use­less­ness at one time or anoth­er,” explains a fourth-year stu­dent at the school. “But with time you get used to it and it goes away.” The fact remains that the Uni­ver­si­ty of Tech­nol­o­gy of Com­piègne has tack­led the prob­lem head on and moved out the heavy artillery to deal with the stu­dents’ dis­com­fort and misgivings.

Start­ing with the Pre­ven­tive Med­i­cine Bureau. Dr Alice Hoogen­doorn, UTC’s house physi­cian, and nurse Dominique Albanese look after the stu­dents who stay in Com­piègne. “The stu­dents can con­tact us by e‑mail”, says the doc­tor. “We take care of them or we redi­rect them to such con­tacts ded­i­cat­ed specif­i­cal­ly to their difficulties.” 

The first lock­down pro­vid­ed an oppor­tu­ni­ty to observe some recur­rent prob­lems among young stu­dents. “We were able to observe things like burnouts for cer­tain young peo­ple,” con­tin­ues the doc­tor. So we set up on-line “tele­con­sul­ta­tions” with our psy­chol­o­gist to accom­pa­ny the stu­dents expe­ri­enc­ing the most dif­fi­cul­ties. “In par­al­lel with this med­ical sup­port, audio sophrol­o­gy ses­sions have been imple­ment­ed by the admin­is­tra­tion. With the aim of enabling stu­dents to refo­cus and relax. What I am hear­ing is the com­bi­na­tion of study­ing, exces­sive work, stress,” explains Chris­tel­la Lequeux, sophrol­o­gist at the UTC. “But you have to man­age to devel­op good moments and see the bet­ter side of things.” 

In order to sup­port the house physi­cian, nurse and sophrol­o­gist, UTC has drawn its secret weapon; the stu­dent health relay cen­tre. For the past two years, the region has been accom­pa­ny­ing, train­ing and employ­ing stu­dents to cre­ate a link between pre­ven­tive med­i­cine and stu­dents. “We are inter­me­di­aries between the med­ical pro­fes­sion and the stu­dent body,” explains Manon, a stu­dent at the health relay cen­tre. “Our role is to make it eas­i­er for stu­dents to speak up and con­tact with the med­ical ser­vices and to dis­cuss sub­jects that are some­times taboo with them.” 

Whether it was through lis­ten­ing to stu­dents suf­fer­ing from tem­po­rary depres­sion, or help­ing some of them to find the right peo­ple to assist in over­com­ing finan­cial dif­fi­cul­ties, the health relay stu­dents had their work cut out for them dur­ing these lock­downs. “For this sec­ond lock­down, we have set up a group for con­fined, iso­lat­ed stu­dents where we offer live ses­sions on Face­book with sports, cook­ing recipes, where we open the floor for every­one to express their dif­fi­cul­ties.” It’s a great way to bright­en up the lives of con­fined stu­dents and recre­ate links… while com­ply­ing with the social dis­tanc­ing rules.