Students' mental health literacy practices in the management of chronic mental health conditions

The broad aim of my Fellowship would be to maximise the impact of my doctoral thesis work on student mental health. Ensuring maximum impact of my thesis is vital because mental health has been a growing concern in universities in both the UK and globally, as well as in society more generally. As interest in mental health, and how people can best be supported, has grown, the concept of mental health literacy has become a focus for researchers, public health officials, mental health support practitioners, and student support services.

My thesis was focussed on the experiences of students with mental health conditions, and particularly how they engaged with different texts and activities involving reading and writing as part of navigating support systems, managing their mental health, and engaging with their studies. In this work, I was able to capture detailed accounts of the students' complex experiences with literacy as part of their mental health.

This was possible because of the specific approach to mental health literacy I took, where the focus was on what the students actually did with literacy in real situations, rather than what they should do or a measurement of their knowledge or abilities as done by other researchers. This approach was complemented by the use of innovative methods in the project, with remote video-calling interviews used to find out about the students' experiences.

The students' accounts and my analysis showed that mental health literacy played an important role in how students got recognition of their mental health condition from different institutions, how they accessed support and treatment and then participated in that support or treatment and how they cared for and managed their own mental health. Thus, my thesis represented a contribution to how we understand mental health literacy as a concept and how students use mental health literacy practices to successfully cope with mental health conditions whilst at university.

My research is of great relevance for academic and non-academic audiences. The Fellowship would allow me to maximise the impact of this work in several ways. Firstly, it would enable me to communicate the findings, both conceptual and practical, to a range of academic audiences through publications aimed at researchers working in disciplines including mental health, public health, counselling, higher education, and applied linguistics, as well as engagement with existing research networks focussed on student mental health.

Secondly, it would give me the opportunity to develop a series of workshops based on the key findings and practical implications aimed at different audiences, including student support practitioners in higher education, teaching and professional services staff in academic departments, and friends and family of students with mental health conditions. Finally, it would allow me to write research reports designed for non-specialist audiences to disseminate the findings and implications both within the fields of Literacy Studies and Applied Linguistics and more widely to the general non-academic audience.

The Fellowship would also give me the opportunity to expand on the work that was possible during my doctoral study. In this study, I worked with 11 student participants as the intensity of the methods meant a larger number of participants would not have been practical. I plan to make use of the Postdoctoral Fellowship to explore the key findings from my thesis with a larger and more diverse group of students through both a survey and a series of focus groups.

This will allow me to confirm and refine the thesis findings. The Fellowship would further provide me with the chance to enhance my research skills through attending relevant training courses and develop a wider interdisciplinary professional network. The development afforded by the Fellowship in both of these areas would help strengthen my profile as an academic with the aim of securing future positions.