MINDS – Moderation, integration and networks for the mental health of students and PhD students

Mental health is a key prerequisite for successful completion of undergraduate and PhD studies, as well as for long-term career development. Against this backdrop, the mental health of students and doctoral candidates is becoming increasingly important in academia, higher education practice and policy. To address existing research needs and tackle current challenges in the higher education context, the Federal Ministry of Research, Technology and Space (abbrev. German: BMFTR) is funding ten research projects, as well as the accompanying scientific project MINDS for cross-project networking, as part of the funding priority "Science and Higher Education Research (abbrev. German: WiHo)". The projects are united by their thematic focus on the mental health of students and doctoral candidates.

MINDS aims to strengthen health-promoting structures at universities and to support healthy studying and doctoral research in the long term, based on the findings generated within the funding priority area regarding the mental health of students and doctoral candidates. To this end, MINDS acts as an interface between the academic research projects and promotes cross-project exchange in order to create synergies and jointly develop knowledge. A key focus is on the systematic consolidation and analysis of the findings generated in the projects. The findings are tailored to the target audience and translated into application-oriented formats to ensure their sustainable use in academia, practice and higher education policy. At the same time, MINDS contributes to increasing the visibility of the projects and actively contributes their results to higher education policy and academic discourse. By pooling and networking scientific findings, the accompanying project MINDS strengthens the structural effectiveness of the overall funding priority and supports the sustainable implementation of health-promoting structures at universities.

MINDS’ methodological approach is based on a participatory and iterative framework that combines cross-project networking, knowledge generation, synthesis of results and knowledge transfer. It is underpinned by a needs assessment carried out amongst the participating projects, designed to systematically identify common thematic areas, cross-project interfaces and support requirements. On this basis, needs-oriented exchange and networking structures are developed to support a continuous exchange of knowledge and experience. To promote collaboration, digital and analogue exchange formats as well as participatory methods are used to strengthen cooperation between research projects, university staff and other practitioners. In addition, network analyses are carried out to identify networking structures and development potential within the project consortium. The findings generated within the funding priority are comparatively evaluated and synthesised through cross-project analyses to derive research needs and areas for action. These are translated into transfer formats and strategic recommendations for action.