Post-Covid, mental well-being should be built into every course

These times of Covid have been tough on almost everyone’s mental health and have pushed issues of personal well-being to the fore. But they have also shown that, with just cause, it is possible to dramatically transform the way university courses are taught at very short notice.

These two factors make now the right time for universities to put mental well-being at the forefront of their curriculum design and delivery.

The arguments for this are compelling. First, reports such as the What Works Centre for Wellbeing’s Student Mental Health Review of Reviews clearly demonstrate that student success is intrinsically linked to good mental health. In learning environments alert to issues of mental well-being, a positive feedback loop begins to operate: students with good mental health become better learners, and engaged and motivated learners report higher levels of mental well-being.

Second, universities need to take ownership of their function: to aid the personal development of their students. They need to train minds not only to cope but to thrive in the wider world. With UK university students reporting lower levels of emotional well-being than the wider population, and almost one in three reporting clinical levels of psychological stress, this ceases to be simply an institutional objective and becomes a moral one, too.

Third, it only requires a little imaginative effort to see how mental well-being reaches into almost every aspect of our lives – and consequently into every branch of academic enquiry. In all disciplines, and with a little creativity, good pedagogy can be supported by subject-specific investigations into issues of well-being.

Many academics will feel that such reforms would place an additional burden on them, while mental health is the responsibility of the support services available to students. The fact is, however, that the only guaranteed meaningful contact that students have with their universities is via their curricula and teachers. If the academic resides in the engine room of the university, they must also be the driving force behind this reform.

So what would this reform look like? It needn’t be so very radical. A renewed emphasis on good pedagogical models – the kind that have been shown to drive up academic performance, retention and student satisfaction – will benefit both teacher and student.

The UK’s New Economics Foundation positions higher education as central to the national well-being agenda and emphasises students’ need for engagement and a sense of belonging. Programmes can facilitate a connection with peers, involvement in the community and regular, meaningful contact with course leaders.

The University Mental Health Charter acknowledges how stressful the transition into higher education can be and highlights the need for induction programmes and scaffolded curricula, with an emphasis on social and academic integration. It also recommends a greater emphasis on deep learning, for which students develop an intrinsic motivation, rather than superficial forms of learning that are exclusively grade orientated. Meta-learning, which develops a student’s ability to regulate their own learning and well-being, is also identified as good pedagogic practice.

These models can be applied across the disciplines and few teachers would question delivery styles designed to ease a student’s journey towards contentment, high-order problem solving and creativity. But universities can go further. If issues of mental well-being permeate through into the fabric of our everyday lives, there is also an incentive to explore these issues more explicitly within academic disciplines themselves. It may not be obvious, at first glance, how this might operate, but projects such as AdvanceHE’s Embedding Mental Wellbeing in the Curriculum are doing much to make headway in this area.

Certain disciplines, of course, have a more natural fit with issues of mental well-being – nursing, medicine, social work and psychology among them. The humanities may also be readily adapted to examine such issues, in all kinds of creative ways. Perceptions of mental illness are already explored through art, literature and film. History lends itself to an examination of “madness” and medicine through time. Other examples might include concepts of normality and happiness in sociology and philosophy; research into the emerging field of “mental health tourism” in hospitality and tourism; and investigation into the links between green space and mental well-being in architecture and built-environment studies.

Georgetown University, where the curriculum-infusion approach already has a foothold, offers a theology course on the relationship between well-being and friendship, as well as a mathematical modelling course that draws on statistics for nutrition, gambling and alcohol consumption. Management and business studies courses will also, of course, have much to gain from an understanding of how well-being might influence workforce management and productivity.  

Mental health is described by the World Health Organization as “a state of well-being in which every individual realises his or her own potential”. This concerns us all. With participation rates increasing around the globe, higher education is ideally placed to increase the mental well-being literacy of entire nations, if not directly then by a sort of social osmosis.

The implications – social, economic and personal – are enormous. The way forward is clear. The time to act is now.

Geoff Mills is a freelance writer and course designer, with a specialist research interest in campus culture.