SMaRteN is a national research network funded by UK Research and Innovation, led by King's College London, focusing on Student Mental Health in Higher Education. Working with researchers with a range of expertise and key stakeholders across the Higher Education sector, our aim is to improve the understanding of student mental health.

Why?

The Higher Education sector has recently seen increases in the levels of mental distress among the student population. Our network aims to shift the focus of discussion away from growing demand for counselling and support services to build an understanding of what institutional and social factors contribute to distress among the student population and how to reduce this so that fewer students feel they need to access professional services.

​At the same time, we want to develop an evidence base to support evidence-based approaches to professional services, so that the right services are there for students who need them.

How?

Our network will engage researchers with expertise in areas ranging from education to anthropology, from arts and culture to bio-informatics, from psychology to economics. In bringing together this expertise we hope to take a new look at both the individual and institutional factors that influence student mental health.

Our Focus

The network will focus on understanding student mental health and whole institution approaches improving student mental health. The network will focus on addressing three questions:

1. What is distinctive about the mental health and wellbeing experiences of students?
2. What factors influence student mental health?
3. How can we enhance the mental wellbeing of students across a whole institution?​

Who is the network for? ​

There is lots of work going on around student mental health in the UK. Some of this is being led by researchers. However, much of this work is being led by student services or university accommodation providers. SMaRteN will provide a platform to support collaboration – enabling ideas and data to be shared across the sector to support stronger research.
If we really want to change student mental health, we need to consider the challenge from different perspectives and engage researchers and stakeholders from many different disciplines and with diverse experience.
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We encourage all researchers interested in student mental health to join the network. We also encourage stakeholders, including student services leaders, counsellors, mental health advisors, careers advisors and disability advisors to join the network.

We will be working closely with students throughout all of the network activities. We are establishing a Student-Led Research Team and organising a number of student conferences. All students are welcome to join the network.

Should I join the network? ​

Network members will receive updates about network activity and early invitations to all network events.

Early Career Researchers will be able to apply for travel bursaries to attend network events.
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The network will work to connect researchers with stakeholders, students and HE policy leaders to support research that addresses key questions for the sector. 

How do I join the network? ​

To sign up for network updates or for more information about specific events or activities, complete the registration form on our Join page.

Events and activities

As part of the network we are organising a set of workshops to facilitate knowledge exchange and discuss research questions and findings. The aim of our workshops is to bring together people with diverse perspectives to try to develop new ways of looking at old problems.
We have planned to run the following workshops in the first two years:

• March 2019: What is distinctive about student mental health? Pathways to measuring and understanding trends and inequalities in student mental health? 
• March 2019: Social Research: What can we learn about student mental health from existing data sets? 
• July 2019: Education and Mental Health: How do pedagogy, curriculum content and assessment design influence student mental health? 
• November 2019: Arts meet Health: How should we measure and quantify the effect of interventions based in arts and culture within Higher Education? 
• December 2019: Student conference: Launching a Priority Setting Partnership to identify key research questions for student mental health. The Priority Setting Partnership will work with students to identify their priorities for future research into student mental health. 
• February 2020: Non-clinical approaches to student mental health: how do we implement a whole university preventative approach? 

For more information about upcoming events, please join our network.

Funding

The network will be distributing £400k in small research funding awards. Funding will be distributed in four rounds;

1. What is distinctive about student mental health? – Call now closed
2. What can non-clinical approaches to student mental health achieve? – Call opening in November 2019
3. How can we use big data and data linkage to support a national cohort study for student mental health? – Call opening in September 2020
4. The final round will respond to priority questions identified in the Priority Setting Partnership – Call opening in March 2021.

For more information about upcoming events, please join our network.