Project OVERVIEW

Student Minds are the UK's Student Mental Health Charity, working with universities and their 50+ large network of student groups to transform the state of student mental health so that all in higher education can thrive.

More information

Ran a UK-wide survey to understand factors influencing student mental health and what students want to see from their mental health and wellbeing support services next year.

Unsupervised machine learning in the form of Natural Language Processing (NLP) was used widely across a number of data-sets including twitter data to inform the contents of the survey to ensure it gave way to the most statistically significant insights.

Our Data Team then analysed the survey's results using a collection of mathematical techniques to derive meaningful insights from the data which would then informed the policy recommendations.

Presented senior management with our findings as well as actionable policy recommendations for how Student Minds can begin to lobby universities to see much needed change within higher education.

Recommendations include lobbying all universities to make their wellbeing services opt-out as opposed to opt in as well as tailored digitised material for personal tutors and other key stakeholders within universities.

"We've been working with a really passionate group of students to help us with our listening work to ensure we're understanding what students are experiencing. 

These insights will help us in having the most effective response to Covid-19 so that we can do all we can to ensure students and staff are empowered to look after their own mental health, support others and create change."

Dominic Smithies, Student Voice and Equality Lead