Introduction

Welcome to the Student Mental Health Evidence Hub, a free online resource to help you use evidence to strengthen the effectiveness of your student mental health support. The Hub is designed to be a resource for those working within student support services as well as policy makers, evaluators and researchers in higher education.

The Hub includes:

An evidence toolkit – The toolkit presents a searchable database of student mental health interventions and the research behind them. It summarises existing evidence on the impact interventions have on student mental health and student outcomes.

Student perspectives – Documentation of the insights provided by our advisory student panel, detailing their significant contribution and reflections throughout the project’s duration.

Further resources – An assembly of in-depth reports detailing our project’s progression and findings, including an overview of the gaps in the evidence.

Examples of practice – A collection of examples of current mental health interventions from a variety of different higher education providers. This collection will be growing continuously so do check back for updates.

Evaluation guidance – Resources to support those conducting evaluations of student mental health interventions.

Background

The Office for Students appointed TASO to lead a consortium to help higher education providers (HEPs) identify and make use of effective practice in supporting student mental health. This work led to the creation of the Hub of information and resources which the sector can access and apply to improve the efficacy of their mental health practices.

TASO was the lead partner on the project, with further expertise being provided by the other consortium partners, What Works Wellbeing, SMaRteN, Student Minds and AMOSSHE.

Approach

The delivery of this project involved:

  1. Synthesising evidence of research and evaluation activity designed to support student mental health, drawing on two main sources; academic and research literature and projects delivered by HEPs.
  2. Developing guidance for evaluating initiatives to improve student mental health and wellbeing within a non-clinical context.
  3. Developing the digital hub. Our aim is for all HEPs to engage with this platform, to inform their practice, creating innovative interventions, evaluating them, and sharing that information with the rest of the sector.

Our vision

The Hub is designed to be a helpful and collaborative tool and will evolve over time as more evidence becomes available. We hope the Hub encourages stakeholders to learn, adapt, and strive towards a future where optimal student mental health and wellbeing is a mutual aspiration and tangible outcome.

Our Terms

Mental health can mean different things to different people. For the Student Mental Health Project, we have followed non-clinical understandings of mental health and wellbeing. At its core, this is the understanding that mental health and wellbeing is a spectrum that is not necessarily determined by a medical diagnosis. We refer to ‘mental health’ when referring to a person’s emotional and mental state and ‘wellbeing’ when referring to a broader spectrum of experience, including a person’s physical, social and economic context.  See our full glossary of terms.

For this reason, we have preferred using terms such as ‘mental health difficulties’ and ‘poor mental health’ and referring to persons experiencing a diagnosis as ‘living with’ a diagnosis. However, there are instances in which clinical references are used for clarity. For example, clinical language may be necessary when referring to ‘serious mental illness’  where the term is commonly used within primary and secondary care services and therefore higher education providers may need to align their terminology with that of external healthcare providers.

Thank You

The Student Mental Health Project has very much been a collaborative endeavour. It would not have come about without the expertise and dedication of our consortium partners: AMOSSHE The Student Services Organisation, SMaRteN/King’s College London, Student Minds and What Works Wellbeing. We would also like to that UUK for their expertise at the beginning of the project. For their insight and enthusiasm, we’d like to thank our student panel.

We would like to give special thanks to Katie Rakow and Luqmaan Waqar from King’s College London whose attention to detail was essential to the development of our evidence review and examples of practice.

We would also like to thank the researchers and interns. Thank you to our interns Emily Burchell, Miles Johnson and Bethan Hoggan who worked tirelessly and meticulously on our evidence review. For their diligent contributions to the evidence review, we would like to thank Sanjana Prabhakar, Aleksandra Hoscilowicz, Ben Ettridge, Chloe Hayes, Emelia Pasternak-Albert, Ilinca Zaharia, James Murphy, Molly Whitbread and Shruti Sharma from King’s College London.

Finally, we would like to thank all the research participants who generously gave their time and insights in our qualitative sector engagement research.

More guidance

Below, you will find more information about the hub, including toolkit explainers, which will help to guide your use of the student mental health evidence toolkit, other resources, and our glossary of terms, revealing how we define certain language, such as mental health.