Well-Being and Mental Health Initiatives for Students in Universities

Background

Students have major roles to perform at the universities including research, teaching, community service and administrative responsibility. Student members carry a significant responsibility of training and developing students to become future leaders of the country by obtaining tertiary education (Adewale & Abdulsalam, 2017). Their responsibility is not only teaching but they are also responsible for the academic achievement of their students. Student members are, therefore, expected to spend considerable amount of time writing proposals for research support and collaborating with other institutions for them to be able to get support for their research activities (Kyvik, 2013). The increasing quantity of students pursuing postgraduate studies has placed pressure on students to supervise large number of candidates at the same time. This has resulted into students suffering from burnout and stress (Adewale & Abdulsalam, 2017). Student members are expected to build their network and community with industry, government and civil society (Altback, 2013). They can do that by being part of societies and organizations formed in community to deal with those social issues. Student members also serve as social and cultural critics in society. The academic community also provide a valuable voice in analyzing the cultural, religious and other social issues in the society. These students’ members still have to proceed with their daily academics responsibilities of teaching, conducting research, offering community service and being supervisors. They combine both their academic and administrative work and are still expected to give the best performance in all these responsibility (Adewale & Abdulsalam, 2017).