Student Mental Health Evidence Hub

The Student Mental Health Evidence Hub is an open access digital resource that provides information and guidance for the higher education sector on how they can improve student mental health support.

The hub will assist higher education practitioners responsible for designing and implementing interventions to support student mental health. It includes guidance on evaluating existing programmes of support, examples of current practice, and a first-of-its-kind toolkit outlining the evidence base on what works, which is mapped to the University Mental Health Charter.

The hub aims to encourage robust evaluation practice in the sector in order to generate further evidence of what works to support students’ mental health and wellbeing. It consists of five key elements:

• A toolkit and associated pages, which are underpinned by an evidence review.
• Examples of practice from the sector.
• Evaluation guidance on how to select and measure mental health outcomes in non-clinical settings, written especially for the project.
• Student perspectives.
• Project resources.

The hub doesn't include toolkit pages for suicide prevention interventions, or online interventions, as these were beyond the scope of this project, nor does the hub cover the use of data analytics to support student mental health.

The project was managed by a consortium of five expert partner organisations to ensure the hub’s value to the sector: AMOSSHE, SMaRteN (led by King’s College London), Student Minds, and What Works Wellbeing, with TASO (Centre for Transforming Access and Student Outcomes in Higher Education) as the lead partner.

The hub was developed with the support of a dedicated student panel. The student panel included students from various backgrounds, courses and higher education providers, all with an interest in promoting student mental health. The panel provided insights into how students experience current support systems in higher education.