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Blog.

King's Sport Active Wellness Scheme: promoting mental wellbeing through physical health

3/22/2019

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King's Sport is a department within King's College London that has the ambition of being the Most Active University in London - we operate across London with 3 Health & Fitness Facilities located in 3 different Boroughs of London in addition to a Physical Activity Programme that spans across all of King's Campuses and Student Residence Locations 

The Active Wellness Scheme has been developed to help anyone within the King’s College London Community who suffers from any mental or physical health issues improve their overall wellbeing by helping them to become more active and by make better lifestyle choices. 

Those on the scheme receive a free 6-week gym membership with access to all classes and four 1-2-1 sessions with a Coach who will provide them with a personalised gym programme and ongoing support. This will develop their exercise skills by improving their experience and their knowledge in the gym and to understand how training can be utilised to improve their overall wellbeing.


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Reflecting on the day: Smarten's sandpit event, 13th march

3/21/2019

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​The first SMaRteN ‘mini-sandpit’ event held on 13th March 2019 represented an invaluable opportunity for a diverse network of stakeholders to consider and discuss what is distinctive about student mental health. Michael Priestley and Katie Tyrrell, representing the SMaRteN student-led research team, summarise and reflect on the day… 

​Alyson Dodd, Senior Research Fellow at Northumbria University, began by introducing SMaRteN and the objectives of the sandpit. Alyson started from a conceptualisation of student mental health as existing on a continuum with wellbeing. The importance of using consistent, reliable and meaningful measures, indicators and outcomes was emphasised. This is essential in order to understand distinctive ‘student’ risk factors; track and monitor students requiring support; and evaluate the effectiveness of support strategies within a whole-university approach.


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Using digital technologies to support student mental health

3/15/2019

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I am a Research Fellow based in the NIHR MindTech Medtech Co-Operative research group in the School of Medicine, University of Nottingham. Mindtech is a national centre focusing on the development, adoption and evaluation of new technologies for mental healthcare and dementia. I works on projects relating to evaluating digital technologies for children and young people’s mental health. One of my main interests lies with using digital technologies to support university students’ mental health – for example, how online programmes may be used by universities and counselling services to support their students’ mental health. 


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Encouraging male students to seek mental health support

3/15/2019

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​Generally, men are more reluctant to seek mental health support than women. These findings remain consistent across younger adults and particularly university students. Thus, male students are a particularly vulnerable group. To overcome this, my PhD is centred around developing an intervention for male university students aiming to improve their willingness to seek psychological support. Over the next 3 years, I plan to identify key features within interventions that may encourage male students to seek mental health support, collaborate with male students to help develop an appropriate/feasible intervention, and to lastly pilot this intervention with male students at KCL.

Ilyas Sagar-Ouriaghli, NIHR PhD Student, King’s College London 
Contact: ilyas.sagar-ouriaghli@kcl.ac.uk


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Researching Mental Health and academic culture

3/11/2019

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Medical cultural anthropology
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While studying veterinary medicine in France, I developed a strong interest in medical anthropology, based in an understanding that the health and disease of humans and other animals are constructed, debated and politicised notions. This is why, after my training as a veterinarian epidemiologist, I further explored the social dimensions of global public health issues and interventions. This was done through a project in Thailand, researching village-based social networks around poultry disease surveillance. I then worked on worldwide knowledge flows in collaborative research on Nipah virus (a virus transmitted to people by bats) for my master’s degree in Science Policy.


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What can we learn about student mental health from surveys?

3/8/2019

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​Universities are starting to run surveys to monitor the wellbeing of their student populations. These are powerful resources that will enable us, in time, to test whether student mental health is changing. For example, whether a current cohort of students are more likely than previous ones at a particular institution to be anxious or depressed. The data could also be used to track student trajectories as they progress through their university years, allowing interventions to be targeted at times and groups of greatest need.

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The Wellbeing Perspective: wellbeing in and through learning and teaching

3/4/2019

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"But we’re lecturers, not therapists!”

​In my area of work, I encounter this objection on a fairly regular basis and my response is always the same. Trying to turn lecturers into therapists is not my goal; this would be neither effective as teaching nor therapy. I have now come to expect, accept and understand the reasons behind this misplaced fear. I even enjoy encountering this response, as it opens up a space in which to discuss ‘how things are done around here’ and to revisit our objectives as educators.


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Accessing mental health support at university: breaking down the barriers

3/1/2019

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To ensure student mental health research is focused on the issues that matter to students, it is crucial that students themselves have an active rather than passive involvement in research. As such, our research project was participatory in nature, putting myself and three other Royal Holloway students with lived experiences at the centre of the research, under the guidance of Dr Eilidh Cage. 

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    We are using this blog to help connect stakeholders across Higher Education interested in student mental health. If you have a project you are working on or an idea you'd like to develop, why not write your own blog post for us?

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  • About
    • Contact
    • Leadership
    • Student Media Team
    • Student Team 20/21 >
      • Student Team 19/20
      • Student Team 18/19
    • Mental Health Research Matters
  • Take part
    • Co-Creation Project
    • Groups >
      • Our Virtual Groups
      • Past Sessions
      • Suggest a New Group
    • Participate in Research >
      • Student Mental Health: What Are the Key Questions?
  • Student Podcasts
  • Events
    • Past Events >
      • Tomorrow’s University: the future of student mental health & wellbeing
      • Webinar: “Embedding peer-assisted learning to support student mental health, wellbeing and academic progress”
      • Webinar: “Pathways to success: supporting good transitions into university”
      • Launch Event “Things and the mind”
      • Enhancing Inductions for Postgraduate Students
  • Funding
    • Funded Research 2019
    • Funded Research 2020
    • Funded Research 2021
    • CLOSED: Key Questions Funding Call
  • Interviews
  • Blog
    • Blog Post Guidance
  • Resources
    • Key Questions: Research Priorities for Student Mental Health
    • Student Services Partnerships Evaluation and Quality Standards (SPEQS) Toolkit
    • Measuring Wellbeing in the Student Population
    • COVID 19 Study
    • Review of National Surveys
    • Reading List
    • Newsletter