The student mental health charity, Student Minds, has conducted a survey and report: LGBTQ+ Student Mental Health: The challenges and needs of gender, sexual and romantic minorities in Higher Education. I was invited to a discussion of the survey’s findings along with 15 participants from: Stonewall, the Office for Students, Advance HE, HEPI, university mental heath and student services and associated charities, academics researching in this area. The key discussion points for me were:
- how to find effective ways of ameliorating student mental health issues for students
- how to make universities more inclusive, as a perception of ‘otherness’ by LGBTQ+ students can only exacerbate mental health issues
- how LGBTQ+ student union societies could be more inclusive.