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

我的奖学金的广泛目标是最大限度地提高我的博士论文工作对学生心理健康的影响。确保我的论文的最大影响是至关重要的，因为心理健康一直在英国和全球的大学，以及在社会上更普遍的关注。随着人们对心理健康以及如何最好地支持人们的兴趣的增长，心理健康素养的概念已成为研究人员，公共卫生官员，心理健康支持从业人员和学生支持服务的焦点。我的论文集中在学生的心理健康状况的经验，特别是他们如何从事不同的文本和活动，涉及阅读和写作的导航支持系统的一部分，管理他们的心理健康，并与他们的研究。在这项工作中，我能够捕捉到学生的复杂经历的详细说明，识字是他们心理健康的一部分。这是可能的，因为我采取了特定的方法来进行心理健康扫盲，重点是学生在真实的情况下实际上做了什么识字，而不是他们应该做什么，或者像其他研究人员那样测量他们的知识或能力。该项目中使用了创新方法来补充这种方法，使用远程视频电话采访来了解学生的经历。学生的叙述和我的分析表明，心理健康素养在学生如何从不同机构获得对他们心理健康状况的认识，他们如何获得支持和治疗，然后参与支持或治疗，以及他们如何照顾和管理自己的心理健康方面发挥了重要作用。因此，我的论文代表了一个贡献，我们如何理解心理健康素养作为一个概念，以及学生如何使用心理健康素养的做法，成功地科普心理健康状况，而在大学。我的研究是非常相关的学术和非学术观众。奖学金将使我能够在几个方面最大限度地发挥这项工作的影响。首先，它将使我能够沟通的结果，无论是概念和实际的，通过针对研究人员在学科工作，包括心理健康，公共卫生，咨询，高等教育和应用语言学，以及与现有的研究网络专注于学生心理健康的参与出版物，以一系列的学术受众。第二，我可以借此机会，根据研究的主要结果和实际影响，为不同的对象，包括高等教育的学生支援工作者、学术部门的教学和专业服务人员，以及有精神健康问题的学生的朋友和家人，举办一系列工作坊。最后，这将使我能够为非专业观众撰写研究报告，以传播扫盲研究和应用语言学领域内的研究结果和影响，并更广泛地向一般非学术观众。该奖学金也将给我机会，扩大在我的博士研究期间可能的工作。在这项研究中，我与11名学生参与者一起工作，因为这种方法的强度意味着更多的参与者是不切实际的。我计划利用博士后奖学金，通过调查和一系列焦点小组，与更大更多样化的学生群体一起探索我论文的关键发现。这将使我能够确认和完善论文的发现。该研究员将进一步为我提供机会，通过参加相关培训课程提高我的研究技能，并发展更广泛的跨学科专业网络。奖学金在这两个领域提供的发展将有助于加强我作为一个学者的形象，以确保未来的位置。

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.