Cited from an article I recently read which I thought others might find an interesting and curious read. We often wonder why there is an evident lack of research and concern into student mental health issues, and so I am offering this article as a way to show what research is going ahead, in the hopes it stills a few of your fears about society ignoring us students.
"Public concern for the mental health of university students has been rising. University counselling services in the UK and USA are reporting increases in helpseeking, with more students presenting with more severe problems (Avotney, 2014; Flatt, 2013). Several reasons probably explain this increase. Distress among younger people has increased, especially among women (Lessof et al., 2016; Ross et al., 2017). With many more students to university (Bathmaker, 2003) and with classes of over 200 per year on some courses students receive less personalised support. Social media (Jacobsen & Forste, 2011) and financial difficulty resulting from increased tuition fees (Gani, 2017) have both been suggested but have little research evidence...
...The World Health Organisation model of informal and formal help (World_Health_Organisation, 2009) could be adapted to students (see Table 1). It describes support in several steps, with the most accessible at the bottom (level 2) and least accessible at the top (levels 4 and 5). Most university services are provided at level 4 but coordination is needed between different levels especially 2 and 3 where we have already seen there could be simple and scalable interventions to support the developmental changes over the university years. Levels of support, as Table 1 suggests, need to be adaptable and tailored. At the highest levels, we have little understanding of the comparative effectiveness and costeffectiveness of different interventions for this developmental level, in this sort of setting. Clearly, the most severe problems should be treated by specialist services that are available to the population. But at lower levels many interventions have been suggested and, in this issue, canine therapy and peer support are effective although peer support has attrition problems..."
Cited from: June S. L. Brown (2018) Student mental health: some answers and more questions, Journal of Mental Health, 27:3, 193-196, DOI: 10.1080/09638237.2018.1470319
To read the full article click below.
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