Student Mental Health and the COVID-19 Pandemic

This week, City, University of London held a Knowledge Exchange and Transfer conference on student mental health and the COVID-19 pandemic, bringing together a range of relevant stakeholders including students, student unions, student services, clinical practitioners, academics, and student mental health researchers to:

• Open conversations around student mental health and COVID-19

• Establish collaborations and working relationships across different entities at universities to mitigate the long-term effects of COVID-19 on student mental health

• Hear from students, what issues they have experienced as a consequence of the pandemic and what they would like to see with respect to support and culturally sensitive mental health provisions

The conference was jointly delivered by City’s Department of Psychology and Department of Journalism and introduced by co-organiser, Dr Anne-Kathrin Fett, Senior Lecturer, Department of Psychology.

Speakers included NUS president elect, and City Students' Union President, Shaima Dallali, who discussed how City Students’ Union has investigated and prioritised student mental health both before and during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Shaima Dallali, City Students' Union President

Dr Jessica Jones Nielsen, Senior Lecturer, Department of Psychology and Assistant Vice President (EDI-Race Equality) at City, University of London, discussed the importance of intersectional thinking to bring about transformative change for improved student mental health.

Dr Jessica Jones Nielsen, Assistant Vice President (EDI-Race Equality) at City

Dr Ellie Dommet from King’s College London and the Student Mental Health Research Network (SMaRteN) leadership team, discussed the SMaRteN priority setting exercise, COVID-19 related research, and how to get involved with SMaRteN.

Further talks were from Henry Jones, CEO of TogetherAll, Dr Trish Jackman, University of Lincoln, Dr Lucian Milasan, Nottingham Trent University, and Dr Emma Broglia, University of Sheffield.

Check out the Twitter hashtag #CitySMH to view slide presentations and posters from the conference.

The Student COVID-19 podcast was also created to support the conference with the first three episodes available on Sound Cloud, with a fourth to follow shortly outlining the Q & A session held at the end of the conference.

You can also check out the podcast on Twitter here.

Dr Glenda Cooper, Senior Lecturer at the Department of journalism who co-organised the conference and led on the creation of the podcasts said:

It's been great for us in journalism to work together with psychology to highlight this very pressing issue of how students coped with the pandemic. Attending the conference I was more convinced than ever that we need to communicate issues such as social isolation, caring responsibilities and online learning widely. We're so grateful to all the students who gave up their time to talk to us for the podcast series, as well as those who produced it and promoted it via social.

Funding

The conference was funded by a grant from Research and Enterprise at City, University of London.

Find out more

Visit the COVID-19 Student Experience Podcast

Visit the Student Mental Health Research Network.