Student Mental Health Strategy

Work is ongoing on updating the Student Mental Health Strategy for 2021. Please visit these pages for the updated work. 

Background

In late 2014 the University established a Student Mental Health Strategy Group to develop a medium term strategy for student mental health in the light of rising demand for support services. 

The group set out a vision that the University should be 'an environment which enables and supports our students to flourish', and developed a strategy with the twin aims of ensuring that:

• The University is recognised as a community that promotes the good mental health of its students and treats all students with respect and empathy
• Students who experience mental health difficulties at the University of Edinburgh are well supported

The strategy was endorsed by the Learning and Teaching Committee in January 2017. You can download the  old strategy here.

A multi-disciplinary group (with representation from across the University) has been working to take forward implementation of the strategy over the three year period between 2017 and 2021. There is a current focus on:

• Prevention, early intervention and building communities
• Promoting positive mental health and wellbeing and communicating effectively with the University community
• Ensuring our services are well-resourced and deliver a wide range of interventions (including individual work, group-work and on-line/ digital support) in order to respond to growing demand for help
• Developing research projects to track the impact of our services on the University community

Further information on the work of the implementation group can be found here. If you have any questions, please contact the group's convenor Andy Shanks (Director of Student Wellbeing) or Rebecca Shade (Projects and Policy Officer) at Andy.Shanks@ed.ac.uk or Rebecca.Shade@ed.ac.uk.