Unified: a digital solution to reduce referral time towards mental health services in higher education institutions

My research for the past year has been focused on the student support services at Universities across the UK, and the systems they operate upon. Specifically, I have been researching the waiting times between students applying for help, and their first face-to-face appointment. The original focus of my research was in to the accessibility of services, and the ease of application. I have co-founded a student health company called Unified, having been accepted on to We Are Nova’s start up school. I am developing a digital solution which higher education institutions can implement, to reduce the processing and referral time for services which are under increasingly high demand on a national scale

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​I graduated this summer from Brighton University, with a first in Fine Art: Critical Practice. I began my work a year ago, at the beginning of my final year at uni. I started my research as a result of witnessing the support system failing students as a result of extremely long waiting times/ difficult means of accessing services. Discussing this with many of my peers across a huge range of university’s, it became apparent that these issues were across the board, and did not correlate to where a University sits on a league tables. 

My initial interest in this subject of research began with essays in my second year of university, investigating how far individualism in neoliberal culture has affected young peoples’ mental health, in particular, students. In the process of writing essays around this subject matter, I read a report by the Institute for Public Policy Research on improving student mental health in the UK’s universities. The statistics at the core of this report were shocking to me. The demand for support services had increased 5 fold in 10 years, despite just under half of students experiencing mental health issues choosing not to disclose it to their Uni. Only 28% of students report being aware of the support available to them. Under half of Universities know the exact number of students experiencing mental health issues, or applying for support services. The stats continued throughout the report and became more and more concerning! I decided to research possible solutions, tools, possible methods of reform which could help tackle these fundamental issues which occur on a national scale. 

My research for the past year has been focused on the student support services at Universities across the UK, and the systems they operate upon. Specifically, I have been researching the waiting times between students applying for help, and their first face-to-face appointment. The original focus of my research was in to the accessibility of services, and the ease of application. I have co-founded a student health company called Unified, having been accepted on to We Are Nova’s start up school. I am developing a digital solution which higher education institutions can implement, to reduce the processing and referral time for services which are under increasingly high demand on a national scale. The main purpose for my work is to facilitate early intervention through accessible application services, allowing students to access help before hitting crisis point, and preventing students having to sacrifice mental wellbeing, and potentially their education. I aim to build a system which makes the processing of applications, and potentially early stages of triage easier for University’s and therefore faster and less stressful for students. It is important to build an infrastructure which can support the increasingly high demand for support services. In order to improve the systems already in place, data must be collected by institutions, quantifying the demand - currently many university’s do not have a method of collecting this information efficiently. I am researching heavily where the services would benefit most from reform, where the outcome benefits the mental health of students, along with the services which University's are able to offer.

I would be incredibly interested and grateful to hear the thoughts of people like you! I am striving to work with as many people in the sector as possible (both mental health, and higher education) to make sure I develop a solution which has a large impact. No amount of information is enough for this kind of work, so opinions and further research would be greatly appreciated. I am looking for people who would be interested on being on an advisory board for the company.

Beyond the higher education sector, I strongly believe that there is a need for this accessible means of application for local mental health services, especially for young people. Accessibility is key for early intervention, and preventative measures should be prioritised more heavily on a national scale. 

My email address is josie@unifying.co.uk or feel free to find me on LinkedIn!