University leaders need to be more open about their own mental health struggles if?they want to?encourage a?culture of?openness around psychological well-being, a?conference heard.

Higher education institutions should be?places where ¡°everyone feels confident that they can be?human¡± and can have conversations about their mental health, said Steve West, vice-chancellor of the University of the West of England.

¡°Vice-chancellors and their senior teams are there to set the culture,¡± Professor West told a?Universities?UK conference on the issue. ¡°They have to be brave to make changes when they see things that aren¡¯t working¡­ and it¡¯s leadership that sets the tone.¡±

The event was held after a major sector survey, conducted for the Education Support charity, found that 71?per cent of university staff who responded feared that speaking out about a mental health issue would harm their career, and 59?per cent felt they would be seen as?weak.

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Professor West, who is UUK¡¯s president, spoke about sharing his own experience of a low moment amid the pandemic during a question-and-answer session and about how it had prompted a staff member to reach out about their own mental health.

¡°That human connection is what leadership has to be able to engage with, and sometimes that¡¯s about showing vulnerability,¡± he said. ¡°That¡¯s the sort of leadership that we need in our institutions.

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¡°We know that for mental health and well-being, it has to be a team sport.¡±

Nic Beech, vice-chancellor of Middlesex University, who also spoke on the panel, said that he had recently had a period of?poor mental health and that he felt lucky to be able to be open about?it.

¡°There is still stigma [around mental health],¡± he said. ¡°It?does create a vulnerability, even in people who are vice-chancellors, but how much more so for people who are in different positions.¡±

Professor Beech added that universities should ¡°think about leadership as including some of the skills of empathy, and compassion¡±.

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¡°If you look at the kind of traditional ways of thinking about leadership, you don¡¯t spot those things,¡± he said.

Karen Cox, vice-chancellor of the University of Kent, agreed that senior leaders needed to understand this and to ¡°make themselves available to wider issues¡­so that they can be alert and more attuned to what¡¯s actually going on across the organisation¡±.

The vice-chancellors also agreed that universities needed to tackle assessment as part of their efforts to improve student mental health.

Professor Beech said an important change would be to ¡°reframe assessment, as if learning mattered¡±.

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¡°In other words, that it isn¡¯t just the traditional way of doing assessments and all the stress that exams bring,¡± he said. ¡°Wouldn¡¯t it be much better if we were to rethink assessment in a way that produced great learning, and if you¡¯re going to do that, you¡¯re actually going to have a system that enables people to be in good mental health at the time that they¡¯re taking them.¡±

However, people have ¡°to accept that any form of assessment is stressful¡±, Professor Beech continued. Assessment is a form of performance, and outside university settings, students and graduates will face stress all the time, he explained. ¡°So mental well-being is not about eliminating stress, but it is about managing the way that we approach it, and also constraining and moderating it where appropriate.¡±

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anna.mckie@timeshighereducation.com