#stepchange - A New UUK Campaign for Mental Health
Mental health has been described as a crisis for UK universities. The number of students forced to drop out of their courses due to mental health problems has trebled in recent years, with associated legal claims and suicides generating media attention.
In September Universities UK launched #stepchange, a campaign designed to show why mental health should be a strategic priority within higher education. It is the latest development in UUK's mental health programme, which was created in 2016 to support higher education senior teams in adopting a whole-university approach to mental health and wellbeing by engaging with students and staff.
#stepchange identifies four key reasons why mental health should be high on the agenda for HEIs: risk, regulation, success and policy.
- Risk: there is undoubtedly a need for such an initiative, with 1 in 4 people reporting a mental health problem each year. Students are known to be particularly susceptible to mental health problems and this could mean that in the UK higher education sector around 500,000 students are affected at any given time. The increase in demand for and costs of providing student support services have been widely publicised.
- Regulatory: universities have a duty of care to their students (and staff) and must safeguard and promote their welfare. In addition, those with mental health conditions may be deemed disabled and therefore protected by the Equality Act 2010. Just as relevant are the obligations higher education providers have to students as fee paying consumers, including the duty to provide clear information about the support available to them.
- Success: the benefits of tackling mental health issues are clear. Mental health is believed to be the biggest single predictor of life satisfaction. Within higher education, student satisfaction promotes higher levels of engagement and retention, which in turn improves overall student performance.
- Policy: Mental health is also now a key priority in government policy, having been a feature of all party general election manifestos. Universities already recognise that they have a pivotal role to play in preventing mental health problems and providing early intervention, but there is always more to be done. It is therefore welcome news that a Green Paper on the subject of child and young people's mental health which sets out plans to transform services in universities (as well as schools and for families) will be published before the end of the year.