SMaRteN held a funding call entitled 'What can non-clinical approaches to student mental health achieve?' this Spring. After reviewing 40 applications, we’re delighted to announce the funded projects! We’re excited to see where these projects will lead and look forward to updating our network on their achievements.

Funded Projects

1. Imagining Wellness: Helping Students to Connect, Create, and Collaborate in their Own Wellbeing
2. Pilot study of a Student-led Peer Support Wellbeing Programme
3. ​The SUpervisory role in Postgraduate ExpeRience: a mental health perspective (SUPER)
4. ​Developing a student-led induction package: Getting off to a mentally healthy start in doctoral study
5. ​​MAPPing Social Connectedness: Stakeholder-led pilot research supporting the development of a campus app to promote wellbeing through increasing social connectedness
6. Student Wellbeing and Experiential Learning Spaces (SWELS)
7. An evaluation of a study groups social intervention to support the mental health and wellbeing of MSc students
8. ​​Coordinating longitudinal studies into student mental health

 

Imagining Wellness: Helping Students to Connect, Create, and Collaborate in their Own Wellbeing.

Project Summary
​University where the research is taking place: University of East Anglia
Lead researcher for the project: Dr Georgia Walker Churchman

This interdisciplinary project builds upon research on the therapeutic effects of participation with art and culture, exploring the extent to which creatively engaging with mental health heritage can improve wellbeing for students. Researchers working in the fields of literature, film studies and psychology have come together to design a short course in which undergraduate students at UEA will explore films at the East Anglian Film Archive, literary texts dealing with mental health issues, and asylum archival records from the Norfolk Records Office. The students will research and produce short films to be hosted online and screened by the East Anglian Film Archive at the end of the project. The principles being tested are that the students benefit from the creative and collaborative experience and that engagement with mental health heritage allows them to reflect on their experiences, perceptions and wellbeing in a relaxed and safe environment.

We are keen to find out how institutional links with creative spaces can support student wellbeing. This project is working with the East Anglian Film Archive and their extensive regional film and television collections, as well as their expertise in training students to use their archives. We are also drawing on the rich tradition of creative writing in Norwich to help students hone the creative aspects of this project. This study builds on previous projects, in particular ‘Change Minds’– an archival exploration and art project that used heritage resources as the basis for a 12 week course for people in the region on low incomes with mental health conditions. This project is an opportunity to develop the findings of the Change Mind project and to investigate how these insights could be applied to university students.”

The team

Dr Georgia Walker Churchman (PI) is Lecturer in Humanities at UEA. Her research focuses on metaphors of mental illness in literature, affect theory and psychoanalysis. She has published on representations of madness in the work of Scottish author Alasdair Gray, and is currently turning her PhD on madness in Scottish fiction into a monograph.

Dr Tim Snelson (CI) is Senior Lecturer in Film History and the Director of the East Anglian Film Archive. He has recently been PI on an AHRC project on mental health and film. He has been CI on an AHRC project looking at young people’s use of filmmaking to engage with intersecting identities and cultural heritage. This new project interrogates the intersection of those specialisms.

Dr Vicky Scaife (CI) is an Associate Professor in Psychology. Her research focuses on the social psychology of decision making. Vicky was involved with the evaluation of the Change Minds project, which provides a framework for evaluation of this project.

Angela Graham is Archive Manager at the East Anglian Film Archive. EAFA’s collections include a number of titles relevant to mental health and human psychology, and has been involved in numerous recent student engagement and medical humanities projects. EAFA will also supply support to students in editing and supplying films, and Angela will manage the delivery of archive sessions.

Gary Tuson is county archivist at the Norfolk Records Office, our external partner, offering four training sessions at the Archive Centre, and providing access to their historic asylum records. They devised the Change Minds project (with The Restoration Trust) and therefore will also be key advisors and provide useful comparative data for analysis.

 

​Pilot study of a Student-led Peer Support Wellbeing Programme

Project Summary
​University where the research is taking place: Ulster University
Lead researcher for the project: Dr Margaret McLafferty
​Twitter: @McLaffertyMT

"Ulster University (UU) have introduced a new student-centric mental health and wellbeing strategy, a curriculum-based approach which aims to reach students across the university. A range of materials have been designed and this project will work with Student Wellbeing to embed these materials within a well-established peer mentoring programme, Peer Assisted Study Sessions (PASS), which involves trained student mentors working in pairs to facilitate weekly study sessions with students from earlier year groups. PASS mentors share their experiences and facilitate discussions in these confidential, student-led sessions. A recent evaluation of students involved with PASS at UU revealed that many students would welcome an initiative to help address wellbeing issues.

​The aim of the proposed research is to design, implement and evaluate a 12-week student-led peer support programme for first year undergraduates, focused on enhancing wellbeing and resilience. The aim of the project is to expand the PASS programme, developing a strand focused specifically on mental health. Student Wellbeing staff will provide materials and training in relation to this, and peer mentees from PASS will deliver it. The proposed pilot study will help develop the programme, inform and evaluate the impact of the content of these sessions. The programme will be designed by conducting surveys and holding focus groups with students attending a peer support programme. We will ask students to identify topics of interest and then review the course material and the proposed programme of work. At the end of the programme, focus groups will be held to get feedback on the peer support wellbeing programme and surveys will be conducted. The team hope that this may lead to better uptake and retention and overall success of the wellbeing module, which may then be rolled out within the university and beyond."

The team

Dr Margaret McLafferty (PI) is a Research Associate in mental health at Ulster University (UU), Northern Ireland. She helped co-ordinate the UU Student Wellbeing Study, which identified risk and protective factors for student mental health, conducted as part of the WHO World Mental Health International College Student Consortium. Margaret currently works on the Student Psychological Intervention Trial (SPIT), which includes a RCT of an online CBT based intervention for students. 
Twitter: @McLaffertyMT

​Dr Kelly Norwood is a Lecturer in Psychology, School of Psychology at UU. She is the Academic Lead for the Peer Assisted Study Sessions scheme in School of Psychology and facilitates mentors to provide peer-support learning. Her research focuses on improving the quality-of-life and end-of-life care for those affected by chronic disease.

Professor Siobhan O’Neil is a Professor of Mental Health Sciences at UU. Siobhan develops research studies and promotes evidence-based services and care for those who suffer from mental illness and suicidal thoughts. Her current research focuses on ZeroSuicide, mental health and suicide prevention in schools and colleges, childhood adversities and the transgenerational transmission of trauma.

Dr Elaine Murray is a Lecturer in Stratified Medicine (Mental Health) at UU. Elaine's current research focuses on identifying novel biomarkers to improve diagnosis and treatment of psychiatric disorders. Elaine is currently leading a €0.7m CHITIN project investigating mental health among at-risk young people in a cross-border region funded by the EU’s INTERREG VA Programme, which is managed by the Special EU Programmes Body (SEUPB).

Professor Melanie Giles is the Head of School of Psychology at Ulster University. She has a keen interest in the scholarship of learning and teaching and has led a number of research projects focused on student engagement, employability and peer mentoring. Currently, she chairs the Research and Evaluation Special Interest Group of the International Academic Peer Learning Network.

 

The SUpervisory role in Postgraduate ExpeRience: a mental health perspective (SUPER)

Project Summary
​University where the research is taking place: University of Glasgow
Lead researcher for the project: Dr Maria Gardani
​Twitter: @MariaGardani

"Postgraduate research students (PGRs) are particularly vulnerable to mental ill-health and current research into postgraduate experience indicates that PGRs who report a mental health difficulties feel less satisfied about their life-work balance and their lives in general. Previously, PGRs have expressed general unwillingness to discuss their mental health with their supervisors, citing fear of negative evaluation and reluctance to burden their supervisors with non-academic issues (Metcalfe et al., 2018). This is unfortunate, as social support obtained from good relationships with peers, supervisors and academic staff can help lower stress levels (Nelson et al., 2001).

The supervisory relationship can be crucial for PGR well-being as it is the sole unmediated relationship that engenders almost all of the learning, guidance and support during postgraduate research training (Cowling, 2017). As such, supervisors are uniquely positioned to provide information and support to PGRs, as well as facilitate their access to the relevant services that can provide expert help and intervention. Nevertheless, academic staff often cite obstacles in their attempt to deliver the best possible student support, including the lack of formal training and experience with mental health issues, lack of communication with relevant mental health practitioners, and student unwillingness to receive help (Gulliver et al., 2018; Stanley & Manthorpe, 2001). These can exacerbate additional stressors that affect PGRs (Metcalfe et al., 2018), leading to a possible increased risk of depression and mental ill-health in students (Hefner & Eisenberg, 2009), as well as poor academic results, life satisfaction and general wellbeing (Cornaglia et al., 2015; Mahmoud, Staten, Hall, & Lennie, 2012). Enabling PGR supervisors to perform their supportive role to the best of their ability is likely to make a significant difference to these outcomes, but we currently do not know enough about students’ and supervisors’ needs and expectations, to allow us to design the most effective interventions.

The current project will use existing findings and a collaborative approach with students and staff, to improve the newly built platform Supervisor Training Hub that aims to enhance supervisors’ skills and confidence in reducing student distress. The accessibility and content of the platform make it a universal preventative approach rather than a targeted and specialised intervention, which can be a stigmatising option for many students."

The team

Dr Maria Gardani is a Lecturer in the School of Psychology at the University of Glasgow since May 2015. Her research focus is on mental health issues and more specifically on insomnia across the lifespan, including factors relating to onset and maintenance of insomnia as well as the development of insomnia-tailored interventions. A related area of research is student mental health difficulties in both undergraduates and postgraduate researchers including prevention approaches, service provision and ways of creating a supportive and inclusive environment.
Twitter: @MariaGardani

 

Developing a student-led induction package: Getting off to a mentally healthy start in doctoral study

Project Summary
​University where the research is taking place: University of Lincoln
Lead researcher for the project: Dr Patricia Jackman
​Twitter: @Trish_Jackman

"Mental health in doctoral students is receiving increased attention in the media and across higher education. Within this context, there is growing recognition of the importance of developing interventions to improve mental health in doctoral students. Our recent research, which explored mental health in PhD students from the beginning to the end of their doctoral journeys, identified that the transition into doctoral journey could offer a valuable window of opportunity to better equip students to maintain and improve their mental health. Inductions for new doctoral students often focus on institutional regulations, but a key finding from our research was that there is a need to move beyond such procedurally-focused induction approaches and shift towards student-centred induction models that help doctoral students to develop peer networks and connect with other students “like them” at the start of their journey. By developing a sense of belonging and a shared understanding of what it means to be a doctoral student at an early stage, this could be beneficial for improving mental health in doctoral students.

Student-generated induction (Bowskill, 2013) is a peer-led induction strategy that seeks to develop a sense of belonging in students, with one of the potential outcomes being improved mental health. The aim of our project is to develop an evidence base that will inform the development, delivery, and evaluation of a student-generated induction package to promote mental health in doctoral students. The package will be created by students for students to help them get off to the best possible start on their doctoral journey and reduce the risk of poor mental health later on."

The team

Dr Patricia Jackman is a Lecturer in Sport and Exercise Psychology at the University of Lincoln. Her research seeks to help individuals and groups to maximise their performance, experience, and health across many contexts. In recent years, She has conducted research on these themes in physical activity, occupational, and educational settings. Since completing her PhD in 2017, she has developed a keen interest in the topic of mental health in doctoral students. This interest subsequently resulted in the development of a research project with her co-applicant, Dr Kelly Sisson, which focused on understanding psychological wellbeing in doctoral students across the duration of their doctoral journey. After reflecting on their findings from this work, they both identified the need to pursue future avenues for research that they identified, with the ultimate goal of developing evidence-based recommendations for students, supervisors, and institutions that help to improve mental health in doctoral students.
Twitter - ​@Trish_Jackman

​Dr Kelly Sisson is a Senior Lecturer in the Lincoln Academy of Learning and Teaching at the University of Lincoln. Her role is to support academic staff develop their teaching and research practice. Since 2013 she has been working with colleagues across the University to enhance the experience of our PhD students. This has involved offering training programmes, re-developing supervisor training and creating peer support schemes. More recently she has been researching psychological wellbeing in PhD students, a subject very close to her heart. Twitter - @k_sisson

 

MAPPing Social Connectedness: Stakeholder-led pilot research supporting the development of a campus app to promote wellbeing through increasing social connectedness

Project Summary
​University where the research is taking place: University of Plymouth
Lead researcher for the project: Dr Sophie Homer

"It is now more important than ever to feel connected. We all need to feel like we belong, and meaningful relationships are essential for our happiness and general wellbeing. University should offer students a sense of community and easy access to social networks. Yet, more than one third of students report feeling isolated or lonely. As we start to emerge from the social distancing measures implemented during the COVID-19 pandemic, many of us are starting to wonder how we might build stronger, closer, and more connected communities. At the University of Plymouth, we ask how universities might lead in this endeavour, and how technology could help. Enter: MAPP.

MAPP is a social campus app designed by students, for students. It will enable students to come together for anything – social or academic – from grabbing a coffee between lectures, to forming a study group or hosting an event. It will support student societies, groups, and causes, as well as more informal gatherings. Students will be able to create and join communities, meet new friends, and connect, both in person and online, with likeminded peers. MAPP will ensure students always know what’s going on, and never miss a meeting or event that interests them.

The MAPPing Social Connectedness project will carry out essential pilot research prior to the development of MAPP. The research, designed and conducted by students, will ask: how do students experience social connectedness and wellbeing at university? Where are the gaps in social connectedness? And, how might MAPP fill these gaps? Through thorough, user-led stakeholder consultation, we will establish just what students want from MAPP, what MAPP should look like, and how it could be used to boost social connectedness among students. We will create a blueprint, tried, tested, and ready for MAPP’s design, development, and deployment in the future."

The team

Dr Sophie Homer: Following her PhD in clinical psychology, Sophie and Professor Jon May won funding to design and deliver a mental health and wellbeing initiative for postgraduate research students. Sophie managed this project as Senior Researcher at the University of Plymouth, where she is now a Lecturer in Clinical and Applied Psychology.
Sophie is passionate about preventative and non-clinical approaches to mental health and wellbeing and has delivered keynote presentations on this topic. Sophie is a Fellow of the Higher Education Academy and in 2017 she won a British Psychological Society award for excellence in teaching of psychology.

Onshell Relf became interested in the intersection of technology and behavioural research during his master’s degree in Cognitive and Brain Sciences. Onshell is currently completing his PhD in computer science and behavioural neuroscience. Through the development of targeted computer programs and robotic interface devices during his PhD, Onshell solidified his interest in the application of technology to psychological research.

As such, when the challenge of designing a non-clinical mental health intervention arose, Onshell drew on his skills in computer science and knowledge of psychology to conceptualise MAPP: an app that combines the latest technologies with core principles of psychological wellbeing.

Professor Jon May has published over 100 journal papers on cognition and emotion, and human-computer interaction, and has won over £4 million in research funding since his first lecturing post at the University of Sheffield in 1995. He moved to Plymouth in 2007, and has been a member of the School of Psychology and its Faculty management teams, including a spell as Head of School. He is a Senior Fellow of the HEA and an Associate Fellow of the BPS. His current research focusses on health decision making, behaviour change, and motivation.

 

Student Wellbeing and Experiential Learning Spaces (SWELS)

Project Summary
​University where the research is taking place: University College London
Lead researcher for the project: Thomas Kador
Twitter: ​​@object_lessons

"How important is the nature of spaces within which learning activities take place, both from a learning and a wellbeing perspective? In other words, are learning spaces able to help students to feel and learn better?

These questions have become even more pressing during the current Covid-19 pandemic, with the cessation of virtually all on-site, face-to-face teaching, as both students and teaching staff are now working in a huge variety of spaces, most of which are not designed to support learning.

Student wellbeing and experiential learning spaces (SWELS) will build on growing bodies of research concerning the wellbeing benefits of engaging with culture (including museum, collections, art galleries, libraries and the outdoors) and apply this specifically to experiential learning environments in higher education; an area of work that has only seen very limited research to date. SWELS will bring together and investigate a range of programmes that engage with cultural spaces and collections for experiential learning purposes from three different UK universities; University College London, King’s College London and the University of Oxford. Looking across the programmes at these three institutions, the project will map out how activities that take place in alternative learning environments engage with the question of student wellbeing. On the flipside, SWELS will also seek to identify what role cultural assets can play in supporting student wellbeing, through online provision, if such experiential learning spaces are inaccessible.

Comparing and contrasting data from these three universities, covering both curricular and extracurricular activities, we hope to establish what a holistic approach to student wellbeing in higher education might look like. Ultimately, we will propose a model for a larger study that promotes the use of alternative learning spaces to enhance student wellbeing, aimed at tackling the current student mental health ‘crisis’ from a number of angles."

The team

Thomas Kador is Senior Teaching Fellow at UCL Arts and Sciences (BASc) where he leads a number of modules that involve cultural assets, especially museums and collections, in education. Perhaps the most notable is Arts, Nature and Wellbeing: non-clinical interventions in health, which explicitly seeks to investigate the common ground between human wellbeing and a range of cultural activities, such as gardening, museum/object engagement, music/performance and art making. His research on the pedagogical benefits of working with material culture lead him to exploring potential health and wellbeing benefits of such object engagements, in particular among university student. Together with Helen Chatterjee he is joint editor of a forthcoming volume called, Object-Based Learning and Well-being: exploring material connections.
Twitter: @object_lessons
https://www.ucl.ac.uk/basc/people/academic-staff/thomas-kador

Lucy  Shaw is Head of Programmes and Partnerships at the University of Oxford’s Gardens, Libraries and Museums Division (GLAM). She manages the GLAM Partnership and Engagement Team, developing and delivering community engagement and inclusion volunteering programmes across the Ashmolean Museum, Bodleian Libraries, Botanic Garden and Harcourt Arboretum, History of Science Museum and the Pitt Rivers Museum. She currently leads a University-wide, wellbeing and social prescribing partnership with cultural sector professionals, humanities researchers, medics and scientists and is Programme Director for Oxford Cultural Leaders, an international executive leadership programme for museums, heritage and the arts, which she launched in 2015 in partnership with the Oxford Saïd Business School.
Twitter: @LVShaw
https://www.glam.ox.ac.uk/lucy-shaw

Flora Smyth Zahra is Clinical Senior Lecturer in Interdisciplinarity & Innovation Dental Education at King’s College London (KCL). She is a restorative dentist with a background in general dental practice and teaches undergraduate dental students. With a Masters in Clinical Education and a degree in English Literature, her most significant contribution to KCL has been in the field of education, particularly cross-paradigmatic, interdisciplinary approaches to clinical education and curriculum innovation. This has been recognised by colleagues both locally and further afield. She has pioneered embedding arts and humanities in dentistry and across health professions’ curricula both in the UK and the US. Flora leads the innovative Clinical Humanities module. 
Twitter:  @HumanitiesinHPE 
https://www.kcl.ac.uk/people/flora-smyth-zahra

 

An evaluation of a study groups social intervention to support the mental health and wellbeing of MSc students

Project Summary
​University where the research is taking place: University College London
Lead researchers for the project: Tayla McCloud and Dr Jo Billings
Twitter: ​​@SENSEstudy / @taylamccloud / ​​@DrJoBillings

"There is growing evidence that young people aged 16-24 have a higher risk of experiencing loneliness than any other age group. University students, including postgraduates, are typically in this age range and often find themselves in an unfamiliar environment, city and/or country, away from their usual support systems and with academic and financial pressures. All of this may contribute towards feelings of loneliness and social isolation.

Our team comprises Dr Jo Billings, Tayla McCloud, Dr Gemma Lewis and Prof Sonia Johnson, with the wider MSc programme team. We have designed and implemented an intervention which has been in place for the past 5 years on the MSc programme in the Division of Psychiatry at UCL. All incoming students are placed into study groups of 10 students each. Each group is assigned two study group co-leads, a member of the core MSc team and a PhD student, to provide pastoral and academic support. Students are given activities to complete together on the course induction day, attend lectures and seminars together in the first term, complete assignments as a group, and meet with co-leads regularly. This is intended to provide an opportunity for students to get to know and support one another in smaller groups, thus improving social cohesion in the cohort and hopefully reducing loneliness and potentially other common mental health problems such as depression and anxiety.

We will be using the Smarten funding to conduct a preliminary evaluation of the impact and outcomes of this social intervention, MSc study groups, on postgraduate taught students’ loneliness, social cohesion, wellbeing and mental health. We will use a mixed methods approach, interviewing current MSc students and staff members about their experiences of the intervention. We will also use existing data from the recent SENSE study (see www.sensestudy.co.uk and @SENSEstudy on Twitter) of students’ mental health to quantify the mental health outcomes of students on our MScs compared with other UCL MSc students."

the team

Tayla McCloud is a 2nd year PhD student in the Division of Psychiatry at UCL. She is jointly funded by the ESRC and MRC, and supervised by Profs Glyn Lewis and Claire Callender, and Dr Gemma Lewis. Her research interest is in the mental health of young adults, and university students in particular. For her PhD, she is conducting the SENSE study, a longitudinal survey of the mental health and wellbeing of students at UCL. SENSE is designed to measure factors that may be associated with the mental health of university students, using questions specifically chosen and constructed to capture students’ experiences. With this data, she will describe how undergraduate university students’ depression and anxiety symptoms change over time, within the academic year and across the different years of a degree. She will also investigate how various aspects of students’ financial situation impact their mental health. This project will give her the opportunity to work on interventions aimed at improving students’ mental health, complementing the investigations in her PhD. She was also a student on the MSc programme before her PhD, so experienced the study groups herself.
​Twitter: @taylamccloud / @SENSEstudy

Dr Jo Billings is a Clinical Associate Professor and Consultant Clinical Psychologist in the Division of Psychiatry at UCL. She has been involved in the MScs in Mental Health Sciences and Mental Health Research since their inception in 2014. Their MScs regularly attract over 100 students every year from all over the world. They have been keen to develop the Study Group programme alongside formal academic teaching and found that anecdotally these groups have been reported as instrumental in helping students to integrate and feel more connected with their peers. They are pleased to be able to evaluate this programme more formally now and explore the experiences and views of staff and students on the study groups as well as follow up their impact over time. Her clinical and research interests lie with the mental health and wellbeing of high-risk groups, which students certainly fall into. She also have particular expertise in qualitative research.
Twitter: @DrJoBillings

Professor Sonia Johnson is Professor of Social and Community Psychiatry in the Division of Psychiatry at University College London. She has published research on a range of topics relevant to the care of people with severe mental health problems, including crisis care, early intervention in psychosis, women's mental health and digital mental health. She is currently Director of the NIHR Mental Health Policy Research Unit for England, which conducts rapid research to inform mental health policy. She and her group have been developing a programme of research on loneliness and mental health over several years, and she currently leads the UKRI Loneliness and Social Isolation in Mental Health Network. She also has a strong interest in education, especially training future researchers in mental health, and is Director of the UCL MScs in Mental Health Sciences.
Twitter: @SoniaJohnson,  @UCL_loneliness,  @MentalhealthPRU and @MentalhealthMSc
​

​Dr Gemma Lewis is a psychiatric epidemiologist interested in the causes, treatment and prevention of common mental health problems. She works as a Senior Research Fellow in the Division of Psychiatry, and is also a lecturer on the UCL MScs in Mental Health Sciences.
Twitter: @GemmaLewis13

Coordinating longitudinal studies into student mental health

Project Summary
​University where the research is taking place: University of York
Lead researcher for the project: Dr Dean McMillan
Contact Email address: dean.mcmillan@york.ac.uk
 
This study is a collaborative project between the universities of Bradford, Huddersfield, Leeds, Sheffield and York to help coordinate the running of longitudinal student cohort studies across the university sector.  
 
There is limited data on the mental health and psychological wellbeing of university students. This project will provide a starting point for the building up of evidence concerning the rates of student health problems, the risks and protective factors and how to intervene to prevent and detect difficulties.
 
At the end of the project the researchers involved aim to develop guidance for universities looking to establish longitudinal studies, establish agreement across the sector about procedures for collecting data including which standardised measures to use and explore the opportunities for data-linkage across universities.