Today, Wednesday, December 6th, marks the next step forward in our mental health campaign – we are launching the Let’s Be Honest report and making public our set of recommendations for ARU to help you thrive in an inclusive and welcoming environment.

 Your Students’ Union wants to say a big THANK YOU to you, the students, for making this possible.

What is Let’s Be Honest?

Let’s Be Honest is the elected Officers’ team campaign, promoting honest and real conversations about the difficult topic of mental health. Click here to read more about the campaign so far and the steps ARU Students’ Union has taken to improve the student mental health experience at ARU.

What is the Let’s Be Honest report?

The Let’s Be Honest report is an analysis of more than 2,000 ARU student responses to a mental health survey in the academic year 2016­­–2017. The survey asked students questions about their mental health at university. We received almost 2,000 valid responses, which demonstrates that students truly care about mental health.

THANK YOU to all the students who have took part in the survey – you made it possible to create positive change.

PhD student Hannah Belcher analysed the survey responses and wrote the report, giving us remarkable insight into students’ mental health experiences at ARU. The report also contains a set of Recommendations for how ARU can improve student mental health, informed by the data and student feedback. We have shared this report with the University and we look forward to working in collaboration in order to implement the Recommendations.

Jamie Smith, your Students’ Union President, said:

“This report will start a conversation about what we, as students, need and the support we deserve. The recommendations have come from us and they are for us and I could not be prouder of how open we are here at ARU.”

Click here to read more about what the launch of the report means to your elected officers.

We feel that an excellent start is being made to improve  both ARU Students’ Union and the University’s services, and that more will be done following this launch of the recommendations.

Julie Walkling, Director of Student Services at ARU, has shared this exciting news with us:

“Within Student Services, and across our university, we welcome the high profile the Students’ Union is giving to mental health.

“Despite its best efforts, our Counselling and Wellbeing Service has struggled to keep up with the demand, and this is one of the issues the report highlights. I am pleased to say that I have been able to secure new funding for three additional full time posts in the service, and recruitment to the permanent post is already underway with temporary cover being put in place in the interim.

“We have already discussed next steps with our Students’ Union and agreed to work in partnership to review the recommendations and make plans based on developments since the original research was done. 

"We will work together to promote wellbeing and support student mental health.”

Read the Report

We think this information is valuable for all of ARU, whether you are a first-year student or the Vice Chancellor. You can take a look at the report here: