Up to 40-percent of students report difficulties with anxiety and depression, while only a third of students with poor mental health access university services.

To address this gap, Nurture-U, involving Newcastle University, seeks to understand and improve university mental health and generate evidence-based, scalable tools and blueprints of good practice for the higher education sector.

The project aims to learn from student experiences to improve wellbeing services – and needs the involvement of students to do so.

Pivotal research

Dr Lucy Robinson, from the School of Psychology, Newcastle University, said: “It is exciting for Newcastle to be at the forefront of such pivotal student mental health research.

“We desperately need good quality evidence to help universities develop action plans to support students achieve to their maximum potential, even in the face of the occasionally stressful and challenging times at university.

“Nuture-U will be the largest study of its kind in the UK, and we encourage as many students as possible to take part and be true innovators to help both them and their peers of the future.”

To understand mental health in students, Nurture-U runs a survey twice a year and more than 11,000 students have now taken part. Results echoed previous findings of high levels of anxiety and depression, while 50 per cent of student respondents reported high levels of loneliness.

Around a quarter of students said they don’t have a healthy work-life balance, and more than 40-percent of students reported high levels of worry and overthinking - a known risk factor for the development of anxiety and depression.

In response, Nurture-U is now actively recruiting students with elevated worry to test a user-friendly app focused on building confidence and self-esteem in a clinical trial.

They are also recruiting to a trial of therapist-supported versus self-guided internet-delivered cognitive behaviour therapy (CBT). This will help determine which students benefit from each treatment and better recommend the right level of service to students depending on their needs. These studies are now open to all university students across the UK.

To help students find the right support and resources at their university, Nurture-U is also piloting a new digital wellbeing toolkit. This tool guides students through the available resources and support in their local university and empowers them to self-monitor their wellbeing and make their own wellbeing plans.

'Whole university approach'

Professor Ed Watkins, from the University of Exeter, which is also involved in the project, said: “By the project’s conclusion, Nurture-U aims to recommend best practice for improving student mental health.

“A key focus is identifying how best to deliver the ‘whole university approach’, where every aspect of a university works together to facilitate better wellbeing and mental health. We want to ensure that in addition to wellbeing and counselling services, universities’ culture, processes, curriculum, and environment promotes positive mental health.”

Nurture-U is jointly funded by the Medical Research Council, Arts and Humanities Research Council, and Economic and Social Research Council from the government department UK Research and Innovation.

Anyone interested in taking part can find out more about Nurture-U here or follow on Instagram at @nurture_uni