In light of this, King’s College London held a student mental health roundtable in which the Minister of State for Universities, Michelle Donelan MP joined key university leaders, service providers, and researchers to discuss where university interventions have been successful and acknowledge the need for improvement across the sector in supporting student mental health.
With the COVID-19 pandemic, new risk factors for mental health difficulties have arisen which have disproportionately affected children and young adults. According to the mental health charity Mind, nearly three quarters of students reported that their mental health had been negatively impacted by the pandemic. Representatives from Student Minds, the UK’s student-led mental health charity , explained that financial difficulties, housing issues, and continued work pressure, despite a lack of face-to-face teaching, has exacerbated student mental health difficulties. Student Minds supports universities to co-produce mental health action plans with students and is leading the development of the University Mental Health Charter which aims to make mental health a university-wide priority in the UK. Although the Minister of State for Universities, Michelle Donelan, has increased support for young people through resources such as the Hardship Fund, Strategic Priorities Grant, and Mental Health Exemption Act, student mental health as a whole is far from a positive picture.
An increasingly common strategy to improve student mental health is using the ‘whole university approach’. Although, as a student, this may sound like a fancy name for a vague intervention attempt, the principles behind this strategy are valuable in promoting real change within universities. Those present in the meeting pointed out that, currently, universities are hugely dispersed, with separate leaders managing separate issues. Using the ‘whole university approach’ universities want to promote mentally healthy living, learning, and working environments for both students and staff across every aspect of university life.
King’s College London is aiming to be at the forefront of this new approach to supporting student mental health. With great partnerships across London with the NHS and mental health charities, as well as world leading research in mental health, King’s leaders have been able to take an active role in making sure services are accessible for students with mental health difficulties. However, it was rightly pointed out that support for students should be inherently part of the university experience, rather than a service the students need to seek out. With this in mind, universities should be working towards a cultural shift to prevent the development of mental health difficulties, rather than trying to put a plaster over mental health difficulties after they have become clinically significant.
It is crucial to consider that universities must not only consider the mental health of their current students, but their prospective students as well. Current A-Level students will have missed two years of school, meaning they will have lost learning, socialising, and exam practice. As pointed out during the meeting, the transition from school to higher education is always a big step; with the additional impact of COVID-19, university could feel incredibly overwhelming and dropout rates may be higher than usual. In order to combat this, universities are going to need to work hard to provide exceptional support to the incoming students from ‘the COVID generation’, and put systems in place to support students who would do better to drop out and re-join in a later year.
In reality, it appears that universities need more resources to combat an issue of this scale. The idea of increasing the quantity of teaching fellows, although resource-heavy, will give staff greater capacity to support students, promoting a mentally healthy culture in universities. It was rightly pointed out that by directing students to the mental health services available, these services will receive a demand potentially larger than that they can handle. Leaders need to understand the nature and scale of the challenge; if universities are going to put student mental health first, there must be funding to support that.
It is encouraging to hear that meetings such as that held by King’s College London are becoming more common. Student mental health is a concern nationwide and universities are beginning to act. It is important that university leaders show genuine concern for their students and take accountability for their wellbeing. It is not enough to direct students to a website listing breathing techniques. In order to best combat this issue, many sectors must collaborate to ensure students are well supported. The students themselves should be viewed as partners in combatting the issue of mental health and feel empowered to be involved in creating the university environment they want to be a part of. Overall, a cultural shift to an inherently mentally healthy university environment is crucial for prevention of student mental health difficulties.