Lara Guedes de Pinho invited to present a study for the Mental Health Promotion Program in Higher Education

Lara Guedes de Pinho invited to present a study for the Mental Health Promotion Program in Higher Education

The Presentation of the Program for Mental Health in Higher Education brought together several researchers specialized in Mental Health, including the researcher from CHRC and University of Évora, Lara Guedes de Pinho. Recent studies and reports were presented that reveal unsettling data and it was proposed several strategies for implementation to “change the tide” of the growing trend of Mental Illness among Higher Education students.

The Program for the Promotion of Mental Health in Higher Education, with an allocation of 12 million euros, aims to finance and promote the implementation of projects in the area of Mental Health and Well-being, in order to guarantee the possibility of a coordinated response “to the growing requests from the academic community in the areas of personal development and which also intends to reinforce existing responses at the level of higher education institutions in promoting mental health”, referred by the Ministry of Science, Technology and Higher Education.

Among the researchers, Lara Guedes de Pinho was invited to present her study “Mental Health of Higher Education Students” which has been active since 2022. The objective of the study is to collect data among students to understand the reality on Mental Health problems in Higher Education, communicating strategies to promote mental health to students and creating various strategies to be implemented internally and externally to Universities in order to support and respond to this growing number of students suffering of Mental Illness.

Lara presented the results of the data that was collected through a questionnaire given to Higher Education students, and due to the seriousness of the numbers, she also presented several proposals and strategies to be implemented to meet the needs found in the obtained results, such as “Via Verde Higher Education” to be implemented in the SNS, Peer training programs (in statistics, more than 74% of students would have as their first option to talk to their friends), Student integration programs structured with the involvement of the entire academy, etc.

Watch the Program for Mental Health in Higher Education, with the intervention of Lara Guedes de Pinho: https://www.youtube.com/live/yZKQ3We8KL4?feature=shared

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Author

Andreia Santos

Researchers

Lara Guedes de Pinho