Counselling is a talking therapy where you can explore and address your problems with a professional. Discussing emotional issues and difficulties with our supportive and experienced counsellors can help you to understand how you’re feeling.
The LSHTM counselling service offers relational and psychodynamic counselling where counsellors work with students on the underlying roots of issues in the past to increase self-awareness and choice over how they behave and relate to other people in the present and future.
Our counsellors offer individual weekly appointments to students based on our London campus. Appointments are free and confidential – no information will be put on medical or academic records.
What our counsellors can help with
You can discuss any issue which is causing you emotional distress, such as loss, depression, relationships, low self-esteem, stress, anxiety about exams or anything else - however big or small.
The most common issues which students contact the counselling team about include: 
- Stress & anxiety
- Academic and exam anxiety
- General issues around relating to self and other
- Feeling trapped in negative patterns
- Self-harm
- Eating disorders
- Understanding and expressing gender and sexuality
- Sexual difficulties
- Parental separation & divorce
- Anger
- Bereavement
- Traumatic events and complex trauma
- Phobias
- Perfectionism, overwork
- Feeling that one is only valued for academic achievement or for caring for others as opposed to having intrinsic worth
- Complex childhood experiences
- Experiences of prejudice and discrimination
- Sexual abuse, rape and sexual assault
Counsellors cannot prescribe medication and do not work primarily with diagnosing mental health conditions. Instead, the focus is on working with individual lived experience within a psychological framework.
For guidance and advice on a range of other issues such as disability support, accommodation, financial hardship, and general matters to do with navigating life and studies in the UK, London campus-based students can contact our student advice team.
Our counselling team
Our diverse team of counsellors is led by experienced, qualified professionals. They all work within the
Counselling appointments
Students can book an appointment for an initial consultation to assess their needs, and are usually seen within two weeks.
At LSHTM, we provide counselling for as long as you need it. There are no fixed number of sessions. As far as possible within its resources, the counselling service aims to offer students the number of sessions that reflects their clinical need. Many students are seen for between six months and a year.
Appointments can be face to face or online via Zoom.
Get in touch with our counselling team by emailing studentcounselling@lshtm.ac.uk.