The student mental health crisis: what questions do YOU want answered?
Take a few minutes to ask Higher Education sector leaders what you want addressing in the plan to tackle the student mental health crisis. Mine were around the lack of governmental funding into University student support/counselling and community/NHS mental health services, and the inefficient transfer of mental health care from home to uni.
What is the research/who’s doing it?
With rising concern about student mental health at University, the national Student Mental Health Research Network (SMaRteN) was formed to finally call for more research to fully understand the “crisis” and how best to enable good mental health within the student population. They have launched a study entitled “Student Mental Health: What Are the Key Questions?”
Funded by UK Research and Innovation (big dogs) and based at King’s College London, SMaRteN works with key stakeholders across the higher education sector like Student Minds, Universities UK, and the NHS. This really is a major consultation piece and a big deal in the Higher Education/Mental Health policy world, and will form the basis of a high-profile report that will be considered at a high level by the Government’s sector officials. In other words, this is a chance to actually make a difference.
They’re asking for us, current University students, to inform the key questions. This is a genuine chance for you to have your voice heard on a national scale by a sector leader with the ability to make actual change.
How do you contribute?
What research questions do you think need answering relating to student mental health?
Simply list up to the three questions in the form below:
https://kcliop.eu.qualtrics.com/jfe/form/SV_5hf4uGCmCxVs377
Who can take part?
The network wants to give students an opportunity to be truly represented and meaningfully shape future research in the mental health sector. Anyone with an interest in student mental health can participate.
We want to hear from a broad range of students, whether you study medicine or architecture, history or Japanese, engineering or computer science. We want to hear the thoughts of LGBTQ+, BAME, International, Mature Students… Those with experience of mental health problems and those without. Research and Taught Postgraduate students as well as Undergraduates. We aim to hear from as broad a range of experiences as possible!
What actually happens when you submit your questions? Is this just another call for student feedback that is never actioned?
- They group all responses into themes
- They identify ‘unknown knowns’ — where the question asked has already been answered in the research literature
- They rank the remaining questions based on popularity, while continuing to consider minority issues
- They will then work with the project steering group to develop a high-profile report for the sector, to lobby for change that addresses the questions important to you.
This report means we can pressure universities to do more than they currently are on the issues that are important to you! You get to shape the future of student mental health research and practice.
How can you help?
They need as many responses as possible. Please send questions and share our survey!
More questions? please contact the SMaRteN network coordinator Laura Beswick — laura.beswick@kcl.ac.uk
Find out more about SMaRTeN (early career researchers especially might find this interesting!): https://www.smarten.org.uk/about.html
