Two new projects to help students with wellbeing and mental health

This University Mental Health Day we are announcing two new schemes to help students with their wellbeing and mental health: Read Well and Silvercloud.

News story
Published on Wednesday 6 March 2019
Last updated on Thursday 7 March 2019
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Two students sitting reading on the grass — How can you improve your wellbeing?

“As part of University Mental Health Day it is exciting to see the University launching new initiatives to support the health and wellbeing of our students, complementing the existing support services on offer. ‘Read Well’ and ‘Silvercloud’ will be fantastic additions alongside the recently launched ‘Prescription for Exercise’ to further support our students to succeed. This continues to strengthen our institution-wide commitment to staff and student mental health and wellbeing and is the start of a number of collaborative projects we hope to deliver in this area through the Health and Wellbeing Steering Group."

Acting Vice-Chancellor, Professor Bernie Morley

Read Well

Today (7 March) is both University Mental Health Day and World Book Day so it's a great day to launch this project. Read Well is run jointly by Student Services and the Library and is a scheme that can support your wellbeing by helping you to understand and manage your health through self-help reading. There are currently over 50 books in the Read Well collection covering a wide range of topics. All the books are kept in the Library and there is a dedicated Read Well catalogue with a full list of all the texts. All the books are available to you to either borrow or access online to read in your own time.

Silvercloud

Silvercloud is an online self-help platform for wellbeing and mental health which offers secure access to online CBT (cognitive behavioural therapy) programmes. For this project we are piloting the Stress Management programme called ‘Space from Stress’ which has a focus on resilience and includes topics on assertiveness, problem solving and self-esteem. It is self-guided with no need for staff support and is available to all current students who can create a log-in and access topic modules to complete in their own time.

Silvercloud is easy to use and includes quizzes, videos and other interactive tools and activities. It can be accessed anywhere on any computer, tablet or mobile phone.

More information about Silvercloud or start the stress management programme.