A lot has happened in our project in the last few months!

All participating higher education institutions have held different workshops and/or conducted interviews with their students and teaching staff to get their perspective on student mental health and what topics and skills they would like to have included in a training programme for teaching staff.

Questions were discussed such as:

• What do students need to be able to communicate openly about their impairments and feel safe? What do they expect from their teachers in terms of support for mental health?
• What obstacles do lecturers often face with regards to that topic in their already challenging daily work?
• What attitude, skills, knowledge and structures do you think you need to be able to support students experiencing mental health issues more effectively?

The exchange of ideas on these topics was very well received, but at the same time it became clear that there is still a lot of awareness and sensitisation work to be done. Many teachers are uncertain about expectations and their role. In terms of saying the wrong things and overstepping boundaries, there is also a lot of uncertainty.

It became clear that students do not really expect much more from their teachers than being available and to listen. Furthermore, they should be aware of and have access to the support structures already in place at their universities.

Above all, employees would like to have some basic knowledge about mental illnesses (esp. depression and anxiety), as a kind of a mental health first aid-package, and what might help when students are overwhelmed (e.g. in exam situations). It became clear that they need support in the areas of communication and active listening.

However, it is also important for universities to take a broad stance on the topic mental health, to demonstrate that it is taken seriously at many levels of the organisation, as the UK University Mental Health Charta shows.

SUNMENTORS is currently in the process of transfering the findings of our workshops into a possible training curriculum. We will discuss this in detail at our next transnational meeting in Rome in October 2024, before we start to develop the training programme.