Caring Universities
Student life can be challenging. It can be quite a pickle balancing university, social life, work, exercise, and more. That’s why it’s important to be aware of how you’re doing and to take good care of yourself.
Caring Universities and UM offer free online services to improve your mental wellbeing.
Caring Universities is an international initiative that offers free online services aimed at improving students' mental health. More information can be found at caring-universities.com.
Mind-Health Check
Even though our physical and mental health is a top priority, we often forget to check in with ourselves. This online survey will give you a better understanding of your own mental wellbeing and offers personalized advice on how to improve it.
The survey takes about 25 minutes to complete and can be paused at any time. It contains questions about psychological problems (e.g. depression and anxiety), but also other relevant things such as personality and daily functioning. You have received a personal invitation via email to fill out the questionnaire. Your answers will remain anonymous!
Online programmes
If it turns out your mental wellbeing could use a boost, you can sign up for (one of the) online programmes, free and anonymously. There’s a range of online programmes available for you, including guidance of an online coach.
Caring Universities has developed online programmes for a number of complaints. The programmes are aimed, for example, at improving mood and reducing stress. The programmes are available in English and in Dutch. Programmes are under continuous development and two programmes have been added recently: one regarding improving your self-esteem and one about sleep and your bio clock. Research shows that online programmes work well for many students, and that they can make them feel better.
Results fourth Caring Universities survey
13 July 2023
Caring Universities is a project from Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, Leiden University, Utrecht University, Maastricht University, University of Amsterdam, Inholland University of Applied Sciences, and the Erasmus University Rotterdam. Within this project, the mental health of students from these seven universities is explored and students are offered tools to get started working on their mental health and increase their resilience.
Student wellbeing is important for universities. From the fourth annual survey of the Caring Universities project that was conducted last November, it appears that many students still suffer from psychological complaints such as anxiety, stress, and mood complaints. We saw the same results in our previous aurveys conducted in June 2020, January 2021 and November 2022. The response rate was low 5,6%m so the results are possibly not representative for all students. It’s plausible that students experiencing mental health problems, are more inclined to fill out the survey. Despite this limitation, all participating universities take this signal very seriously and are looking for ways to continuously support their students.
Caring Universities does this by offering different online eHealth programmes specifically designed for students. These are easily accessible, anonymous if preferred, and under the guidance of professional e-health coaches. Students can for example be offered tools to get started with working on mood complaints, reducing stress and combatting procrastination. These programmes get a positive rating from students: 80 percent of users indicate being (very) satisfied. Last year new programmes were launched for improving sleep and combating performance pressure. Soon new programmes will be launched regarding social binding and perfectionism.
The next survey is expected to be sent out in November in the academic year 2023-2024.
For detailed study results, we refer to the study report.