On Thursday March 14th, 2024, it’s University Mental Health Day (UMHD), the annual student mental health awareness day. It’s hard to believe that this will be its sixteenth year, having started back in 2008 to raise the visibility of student mental health on campus and help break down stigma. Back then there were a few events held at a few universities put on by our members (the University Mental Health Advisers Network (UMHAN)) who are mental health practitioners in education.
Since then, the event has flourished. We have always worked closely with the charity Student Minds, and since 2012 we have run UMHD together. Their influence has helped galvanise the participation of Students’ Unions and even more students.
This year at UMHAN we are focussing on two key aspects for UMHD – we are running a webinar which explores ‘when does anxiety become a problem?’, and we are also promoting our long-running #IChoseToDisclose campaign. This is our drive to encourage students to share information about their mental health condition with their education provider, whether that’s when they apply to university or once they’re at university. While the Higher Education (HE) sector has become a lot better about talking about student and staff mental health and promoting the support available to students, as Michelle Morgan recently discussed in a HEPI blog, there is still a real need for this campaign to dispel the negativity associated with disclosure for some students.
We hope to equip prospective and current students with mental health conditions to make an informed and confident decision about sharing information about their mental health with their university. This need has been highlighted by recent high-profile cases highlighting how some students may not feel empowered to reach out to support services.
