The Student Mental Health Project is an Office for Students (OfS) funded project that aims to help higher education providers develop their student mental health interventions. The project has developed a Student Mental Health Evidence Hub, a free resource consisting of an evidence-based toolkit, evaluation guidance, examples of  practice and the results of our sector engagement and student panel work.

The project was led by The Centre for Transforming Access and Student Outcomes in Higher Education (TASO) as part of a  consortium with What Works Wellbeing, SMaRteN, Student Minds and AMOSSHE, the Student Services Organisation.

The Hub contains a number of examples of practice that showcase a variety of approaches to student mental health support in higher education. These examples have been collated as a result of calls to the sector issued by TASO. If you would like to submit an example of practice, please use the form at the bottom of this page.

Please note that submissions will not automatically be included on the Hub. TASO will consider your submission and whether it is suitable to be included; we may not be able to provide extensive feedback on this process, whether your submission is featured or not.

Scope of the examples of practice

We will consider a wide range of examples of practice to enlarge the evidence base. Examples must be of interventions that:

  • Interventions that improve student mental health and wellbeing.
  • Interventions may be ongoing, or where data collection and analyses have concluded within the last five academic years.

We are particularly interested in hearing about interventions with the following features:

Interventions targeting students, particularly the following groups:

  • Students who identify as LGBTQA+
  • Socioeconomically disadvantaged students
  • Students from Black, Asian and Minority Ethnic (BAME) backgrounds
  • Students with experience of care
  • Students with caring responsibilities
  • Mature students

Interventions of the following type:

  • Recreation programmes (e.g., music, art)
  • Active Psychoeducation interventions (taught skills via training and workshops)
  • Pedagogy and professional training
  • Places and spaces (infrastructure, buildings etc.)
  • Setting-based (security, feeling safe, finance)
  • Peer mentoring and peer support
  • Intersystem collaboration ( communication with external services)
  • Improve student mental health and longer-term student outcomes in higher education (retention, progression, awarding).

If you have any questions, please contact research@taso.org.uk

What will we do with examples of practice?

A selection of the examples of practice will appear on the Student Mental Health Evidence Hub as a resource for other HEPs to learn from.

If you have any questions regarding the open call, please get in touch and we can arrange an informal conversation.

Submit your example of practice: student mental health interventions

Intervention design

Please provide details of your intervention, following the outline below:
  • Aim of intervention (including the key outcomes for students)
  • Target group
  • How need was identified
  • Number of students involved
  • Future plans for delivering / scaling intervention
(750 words max)
Intervention status(Required)

Evaluation

Please provide an outline of why you are interested in evaluating your intervention. If you are currently collecting data, please outline your current data collection or evaluation plans.
  • Outline your evaluation design, e.g. mixed methods, a pre-post test
  • Include details of the outcome measure you are using to evaluate the intervention
  • Please name standardised surveys used.
(450 words max)
Please provide an overview of the key recommendations and conclusions from your evaluation or experience.
Drop files here or
Max. file size: 100 MB.

    Data protection notice

    Examples of practice selected may be used to inform a our Student Mental Health Evidence Hub. However, no higher education providers, local authorities, charities or other organisations will be identified in any publication unless we receive written permission.

    We may also ask your permission to refer to your evidence in the digital hub of best practice as part of the online evidence toolkit.

    Please read the Data Protection Notice for this project before submitting your evidence.
    Do you confirm that you have read and understood the Data Protection Notice?(Required)
    Would you like your institution to be identified if you example of practice information is included in the digital repository?(Required)