Durham featured in controversial university mental health league table

By Emily Doughty and Joe Rossiter

Durham University has been featured in a new league table compiled by the mental health charity HUMEN. The rankings placed Durham 56th out of 80 universities featured, but the table has been widely criticised both by higher education institutions and other mental health charities.

Universities were ranked based on five criteria: student satisfaction, engagement with mental health services, awareness of the support available, financing, and mental health provision, including staff training and wait times.

The first two categories were measured through surveys completed by students, while the final three were investigated through Freedom of Information requests sent to universities.

Satisfaction at Durham was rated ‘very poor’, while engagement, awareness and service provision were all rated ‘poor’. However, its financing secured a ‘good’ rating.

The HUMEN charity describes itself as “leading a movement to improve and maintain men’s mental health,” given that “75% of all UK suicides are male.” Founder River Hawkins said: “While it’s encouraging to see a number of universities performing well in HUMEN’s University Mental Health League Table, all universities need to make immediate improvements, so students get the essential care they need, particularly during a national mental health crisis following the pandemic.”

He went on to express a desire that universities and students will “consider mental health support just as much as they value academic performance.”

We sadly can’t support the approach HUMEN has taken on this occasion

student minds

However, the charity’s league table has attracted strong criticism for its methodology and approach to ranking service provision.

Responding to the HUMEN league table’s publication, the charity Student Minds released a statement detailing concerns about its “robustness and methodology,” arguing that it “could be misleading, harmful, and negatively impact student choice.”

They continued to say that “there are hundreds of complex factors which can shape students’ mental health and wellbeing at university, which might not always be obvious at first glance,” including “quality of accommodation, social opportunities, and the curriculum.”

In particular, they highlighted that “solely looking at how much money a university invests in mental health services is reductive,” and argued that “nuance is impossible to capture with such simple measures.”

On the methodology used to create the rankings, Student Minds noted “multiple concerns, including that their sampling approach is flawed, that the metrics they developed are arbitrary and not grounded in evidence, and that the rankings fail to engage with decades of scholarship exploring student mental health.”

Concluding, the charity stated that it “can’t support the approach HUMEN has taken on this occasion.”

Commenting on mental health provision at Durham, a University spokesperson said that “the health, safety and wellbeing of our students, staff and the wider community is always our first priority.” 

They continued to highlight a new “Health and Wellbeing Strategy with increased focus on mental health training and support” introduced last year, as well as the appointment of “our first Mental Health Adviser with a specific remit in training staff and students” and the introduction of “a network of Mental Health First Aiders across the University.”

On student support, they noted that “students can access support through their college or our Counselling and Mental Health Service,” as well as direct access to “culturally-appropriate talking therapy” as a result of a new partnership with “Nilaari, a charity with over 20 years’ experience in the BAME community.”

As a result of a desire to “continually enhance our service,” the University is “currently undertaking a review of student support.. with a view to increasing investment and provision and, linked to this, developing our first integrated suicide prevention strategy.”

They said that “this has already led to further investment directly in staff in our Counselling and Mental Health Service and in Disability Support,” while in future “it will also enhance support for students across the University, thereby contributing to their wellbeing.”

We want universities and students to consider mental health support just as much as they value academic performance

river hawkins, HUMEN founder

On Durham’s inclusion in HUMEN’s rankings, the spokesperson said: “While we welcome discussion on how we can improve mental health provision, we have serious concerns about the way in which these rankings were determined.

“The table was based on information gathered in a narrow Freedom of Information request. No details have been provided on how students were recruited or encouraged to engage with the survey. The small number of students involved suggest this is not a representative survey.”

In addition, they expressed concern about “the presentation of spending on mental health as a percentage of total university expenditure,” because “Durham University invests significantly in research, impacting this measure.”

With regard to the Freedom of Information requests used to gather information, the spokesperson said that the University had “raised with the organisation that it is not possible within the 18-hour limitation” for it “to accurately calculate the University’s total expenditure on mental health.”

Echoing the concerns of Student Minds, they said that “these complexities do not appear to have been addressed when the organisation produced this table,” while concern was also expressed that the University “was offered inducements to engage with the survey if we were willing to give the organisation money in advance of the publication, which we refused to do.

“The approach taken by this organisation has been inappropriate, as is recognised by the response to it across a range of higher sector bodies, and we would urge caution against giving any weight to its findings.”

Responding to the wide array of criticism, HUMEN founder River Hawkins said: “Since publishing the HUMEN University Mental Health League Table, the charity’s research, methodology, data, research questions and results are available to universities and HUMEN would never charge universities access to this.”

He continued to say that “the offer of payment related to a licensing package in which universities could receive the HUMEN University Mental Health League Table logo and ranking to promote across their marketing channels if they wished.

“As a registered charity Humen used the licensing package income to contribute to the significant cost of the detailed research project.”

The league table was published at a similar time to the 2022 Student Academic Experience Survey, which noted that, “In the wake of a return to face-to-face teaching across much of the UK, students this year are significantly more likely to feel they experienced good value” at their universities. However, wellbeing concerns “increased during the pandemic” for many students and it was found that “anxiety levels continue to be high and have only recovered slightly compared to last year.”

Image: Maddie Fisher