The mental health and wellbeing of our students and our staff is something we care deeply about.

King’s is committed to embedding a whole-university approach to student mental health and wellbeing (SMHW), which ‘recommends that all aspects of university life promote and support student and staff mental health’ as outlined by Universities UK Stepchange: Mentally Healthy Universities.

This framework gives King’s an opportunity to:

• Create both effective, appropriately resourced support services and holistic, preventative interventions.
• Understand that the wellbeing of our students is intrinsically linked to the wellbeing of our staff.
•  Recognise the effect of culture and inequalities on mental health and wellbeing.
• Empower King’s community to take an active role in each other’s wellbeing through awareness raising, capacity building and training, and mental health literacy
• Embed wellbeing into campus culture and ways of working (business process, policies and procedures).

This aligns with our strategic commitment to becoming a sector leader in supporting our students and enabling them to succeed as outlined in the Education Strategy 2018-2022 and the Enabling Student Success strand of Strategy 2026, which states:

"Building on our partnership with KCLSU and existing expertise of our faculties, including our Institute of Psychiatry, Psychology & Neuroscience, we will be an exemplar university, ensuring that our support is research-led and evidence-informed.

We will support students effectively at all levels of need, from prevention through support and proactive interventions, to referring students to specialist external services in cases of crisis. This involves collaboration with teams and colleagues across the institution,

We pilot innovative approaches to community and belonging, for both students and staff, and curriculum-embedded wellbeing. Importantly, our approach to student mental health and wellbeing is co-designed with students, drawing on input from the King’s 100 student panel and student staff colleagues, and continuing our partnership model of peer support and engagement with KCLSU."

In 2017-2018 academic year, King’s began a university-wide project, bringing together staff and students, to explore areas of university-life where we could drive the biggest improvements in our support for student mental health and wellbeing. A cross-institutional Student Mental Health and Wellbeing Steering Committee was convened and was tasked with overseeing the University’s approach to addressing student mental health and wellbeing, with a view to develop, implement and share good practice, informed by academic and research expertise at King’s and across the sector. Its first deliverable was the 2018-2020 Student Mental Health and Wellbeing Strategic Action Plan, which introduces our Pyramid of Support Model of Support, based on the World Health Organization’s Optimal Mix of Services Framework.

This Pyramid Model highlights King’s as an environment that both supports our students in times of challenge and helps everyone to thrive, while offering dedicated interventions and specialist support to students when they need it. The aim of the five-level model is to allow us to understand how we currently focus our support to students and where we can focus our resources and efforts in the future. We are committed to making sure that we are supporting our students effectively at all five levels of the model. At the heart of this is ensuring that our learning experience is inclusive and supportive. This doesn’t mean undermining the challenge and rigour of our courses, but instead creating a learning environment that supports student wellbeing – for example through effective academic support, reforming assessment and feedback to a focus ‘for’ learning, rather than assessment ‘of learning’, while introducing a greater variety of assessment methods.   

As part of our commitment, King’s is a proud member of Student Minds’ University Mental Health Charter Programme. The programme brings together universities across the UK committed to supporting university community mental health to share practice and create cultural change.

Learn more about King's participation in the Charter Programme

Recognising that students play a crucial role in helping each other to build coping skills, resilience and better understand their own wellbeing needs, we have also worked closely with KCLSU to equip and train student leaders to support themselves and others through student-led wellbeing activities and high-quality peer support.

This partnership is seen as sector-leading, and we will continue to work with King’s College London Students’ Union (KCLSU) and our sabbatical officers to ensure we are addressing the needs of students.  

King’s & KCLSU work together so that ‘students are empowered to build a community of good wellbeing where they feel able to support themselves and others to thrive’ through:  

• Wellbeing activities and resources that students co-create so that good wellbeing is accessible for all students, no matter their background  
• Consistent, high quality peer support throughout the student journey

King’s’ Student Mental Health and Wellbeing Steering Committee, chaired by Professor Juliet Foster and Joy Whyte, provides a forum for overseeing the University’s approach to addressing student mental health and wellbeing, with a view to develop, implement and share good practice, informed by academic and research expertise at King’s and across the sector. The Steering Committee reports into College Education Committee (CEC) and Academic Board. A Student Mental Health and Wellbeing Operational (Ops) Group comprised of faculty and professional services colleagues reports in the Steering Committee. 

We have specific policies and procedures in place to support students’ mental health and wellbeing at King’s. These include policies to support students through mitigating circumstances that may arise during their studies, and policies to ensure students remain safe whilst on campus. You can read more about these policies on our Policy Hub.

Policies and processes at King’s that support Student Mental Health and Wellbeing include:

• Support for Study
• Emergency Contact Policy
• Mitigating Circumstances Policy
• Prolonged Lack of Contact (Safeguarding Policy)
• Report and Support
• Bullying and Harassment Policy