Student mental health is a central priority for higher education institutions. In recent years, students have navigated COVID-19, the delivery of remote education/support, isolation associated with lockdown policies, economic instability, and adjusting to life since the height of the pandemic. Universities globally have sought to understand how students have been impacted by this upheaval, and how to deliver accessible and effective support.
A WUN Student Mental Health Working Group was tasked with collaboratively developing a tool to measure student mental health, appropriate for use across WUN’s geographically and culturally diverse institutions.
The tool needed to include validated outcome measures, be available in multiple translations and enable universities to understand levels of mental health within and across institutions.
In Phase 1 of the project (2021), the WUN Student Mental Health tool was piloted at the University of Cape Town and captured levels of anxiety, depression and other outcomes experienced amidst the COVID-19 pandemic.
The aim of Phase 2 (2023-2024) was to identify common and unique patterns in student mental health outcomes across WUN universities, building on the insights generated within Phase 1, and the report of findings is currently being written.
In May 2025 UFMG, an active member of the WUN working group, held their 13th ‘Mental Health and Social Inclusion Week’. This year, the event focused on the ongoing need for the fight against stigmatisation and promoted knowledge exchange between structures involved in the provision of mental health services and those in the implementation of mental health policy at the university, in the city, and in the state.
WUN Student Mental Health Working Group co-chairs Memory Muturiki (UCT) and Myles-Jay Linton (University of Bristol) attended the event meeting the UFMG researchers that organised the WUN project data collection at UFMG, and the UFMG Rectorate to discuss the WUN instrument. UFMG Rector Sandra Almeida, and WUN Working Group member and UFMG Vice-Rector Alessandro Moreira were both in attendance.
Memory and Myles chaired a panel “Mental health in universities: global challenges, local actions at UFMG”,and presented the UFMG preliminary results of the WUN Mental Health project data.
For more information on the WUN Student Mental Health Advisory Group, please contact info@wun.ac.uk