Think Positive

Improving student mental wellbeing and tackling the stigma attached to mental illness.

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Student Mental Health Agreement (SMHA) Project

What is it?

The Student Mental Health Agreement (SMHA) Project provides tailored support for colleges, universities and students’ associations to develop and promote their mental health work with students. It enables institutions to bring all their mental health and wellbeing activities into one document. The project helps them to consider what is working well and where improvements could be made. The SMHA is designed to link to wider strategic goals, be clear and accessible for students, and actively measure progress on outcomes. Central to the SMHA project are the values of co-production and collaboration with students throughout.

Think Positive provides a range of free tools and resources to support institutions and students’ associations throughout their journey, including free 1:1 consultancy support, written feedback on draft SMHA’s and a review of success measures to help s to help demonstrate the impact of work. 

Who is involved?

Think Positive is working with and supporting 91% of all colleges, universities and students’ associations in Scotland to promote and develop their mental health support offer through the Student Mental Health Agreement project.

The project has the opportunity to positively impact 469,966+ students in 2024-2025 alone.

Launched Student Mental Health Agreements are accessible on the individual college and university pages. We currently work with a variety of institutions and students’ associations, shown here.

Why take take part?

As a result of taking part in our Student Mental Health Agreement Project 2023-2024 project participants told us:  

  • 88% Said participating has improved the partnership between the Students’ Association & institution. 
  • 83% Told us that participating has ensured that mental health work is a key priority for both the institution & students’ association. 
  • 71% Said that feedback and collaboration with students has shaped their support offer. 
  • 71% reported that their mental health work has developed as a result of taking part. 
  • 71% Reported that participating has helped them understand what is going well and identify areas for further development. 

Our support offer –

As the project is funded by the Scottish Government all of the below support is completely free to colleges, universities and students’ associations in Scotland:

  • 1-1 consultancy support throughout the year via video, email and telephone.
  • Access to a range of tools and resources to develop, monitor, launch and evaluate your SMHA.
  • Written feedback on your SMHA whilst it’s being developed. Including support with setting clear monitoring and evaluation measures.
  • You’ll be part of an online Scotland-wide peer support network, where project leaders meet to discuss the opportunities and challenges they face and share their work.