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Recognising the need for awareness

During Mental Health Awareness Week, we are reminded of the critical need to raise public awareness and understanding of mental health issues, reinforcing our year-round commitment to both educating and actively supporting students in higher education.

Balancing awareness and action

When progress seems slow, focusing on action is both understandable and necessary. At the same time, effective action requires a deep understanding of the nature of mental health, and what is most effective in supporting good mental health. Instead of viewing this as an ‘either/or’ approach – awareness versus action – we should advocate for a ‘both/and’ perspective. Enhanced awareness and understanding about mental health is crucial for ensuring that our actions are effective, and ultimately improve students’ lives.

TASO’s commitment for the coming year

Over the next year TASO has committed to both action and awareness. We are seeking to better understand the effectiveness of current activities around mental health in higher education, with the aim of encouraging those actions that best support students.

This work builds on our ‘Student Mental Health Evidence Hub’, developed in collaboration with Student Minds, SMaRteN, What Works Wellbeing, King’s College London, and AMOSSHE, The Student Services Organisation. The hub outlines the evidence on activities to address student mental health, and provides practitioners with evaluation guidance. From our research, we found that we need more.

Addressing diverse needs

Before outlining what we’ll be doing this year, it’s worth flagging another ‘both/and’, namely the need both to support the promotion of good mental health for everyone, and to ensure that we understand and prioritise the needs of the more serious or urgent mental health difficulties. In a time of stretched resources and increased demand for services as one in six students in the UK report mental health difficulties, it can be difficult to keep in mind the needs of both groups: both the students who would benefit from preventative approaches and those in need of clinical and therapeutic services.

What we’re doing next

In response to the findings from the Student Mental Health Evidence Hub, we recognised the importance of building a robust evidence base, and awareness of student mental health. To this end, we have committed to commissioning a series of evaluations using diverse methodologies, and are set to collaborate with various universities and colleges to expand our knowledge and enhance the effectiveness of our actions in supporting student mental health.

Learning analytics project

In our first project, we will evaluate a range of wellbeing interventions prompted by analytics. Wellbeing is another example of ‘both/and’: wellbeing matters generally for everyone, because it is correlated with good physical and mental health and because it can help prevent and respond to poorer mental health.

We will select up to three higher education providers to work with an independent evaluator to run randomised controlled trials. The overarching research question is:

  • What impact do student-support/wellbeing interventions prompted by analytics have on student outcomes? 

TASO was awarded funding from the Evaluation Accelerator Fund (EAF) for this project. The EAF is administered by the Cabinet Office Evaluation Task Force.

Find out more and apply to be involved in the learning analytics project

Quasi-experimental design project

We will also be appointing up to three higher education providers to work with an independent evaluator to test the impact of mental health and wellbeing interventions through quasi-experimental methods in our second project. These are methods which can establish a causal relationship between an intervention and outcomes.

Find out more and apply to be involved in the QED project

Small cohort project

Our final project will be evaluating mental health and wellbeing interventions with small cohorts (‘small n’ methods). We will appoint up to five higher education providers to work with us and an independent evaluator to test these methods which are particularly well suited for smaller providers and intervention types that only involve a small number of students.

Find out more and register your interest to be involved in the small cohorts project

Together these projects will both advance our knowledge about student mental health, and our ability to take the most effective action to address it. They will aim for both awareness, and action.