Good Practices
The good practices shared below include actions put together to support the mental health of healthcare students, and to prevent mental distress.
The European Medical Students' Association (EMSA)
Soft skill training
In the last 2 years, EMSA has organized training sessions to equip members with the soft skills needed to manage their mental health in the pandemic. Resources on various mental health issues - such as unlearning the stigma associated with mental illness and Stress Management- have also been made available to members.
Awareness Campaign
​With the help of our mental health working group, EMSA curated a list of the helplines for Mental Health emergencies for every country in Europe and shared it across all our social media pages.
Policy
We, as EMSA, strongly believe that mental health cannot continue to be viewed as a stigmatised or taboo topic. Furthermore, within the healthcare field, protecting and maintaining the Mental Health of medical students and professionals is vital. “Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?”, Latin for ‘who guards the guards themselves’; EMSA feels that the Healthcare Field and overall industry should act collaboratively to ensure that mental health is protected and maintained.
Considering the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on health professionals’ mental health, which is about to last for many years to come, highlighting the discrepancies in attitude towards mentally ill individuals and acknowledging the existence of prejudice towards mental health, it is now more essential than ever to take action to resolve this issue. In conclusion, we believe systematic change is required at every level for improvements regarding the advocacy and education around mental health to be realised. Within EMSA, there has been a considerable effort to raise awareness on the topic of mental health.
The MEHR pillar has been running a Small Working Group specifically designed to assess the mental state of medical students’ across Europe, via the distribution and analysis of our mental health survey, to redact a booklet with non-formal educational activities to be used as an awareness toolkit for stakeholders and FMOs, as well as to gather data regarding the situation of mental health in Europe, including the impact of COVID-19 on vulnerable social populations’ mental health. This will continue to be an area on which EMSA will work for many years to come until real change within society has been achieved.
The European Federation of Psychology Students' Association (EFPSA)
Corona Care Campaign
During the pandemic, EFPSA’s Social Impact Initiative has launched an online campaign aimed at providing useful resources for coping with the pandemic and its psychological toll. The content focused around myth busting, fostering gratitude, encouraging the engagement in healthy, positive challenges and generally educating the public on the psychological aspects of functional coping.
Social Impact Initiative Helplines
EFPSA made use of the network of national and local organisations and volunteers to compile a comprehensive database of helplines provided in each European country either in general or specifically during and pertaining to the COVID-19 pandemic. This database has been shared on EFPSA’s social media channels and has been constantly updated.
Association Nationale des Etudiants en Pharmacie de France (ANEPF)
Surveys
In 2019, ANEPF conducted its first study on the well-being of French pharmacy students. Results then were worrying - isolation, school dropout, self harm and insecurities – but things were made even worse by the pandemic. ANEPF therefore set up a second survey on the well-being of students, in collaboration with the local student elects and local associations, which was conducted from 17 January to 9 February 2021.
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Timely Emergency Aid
Some 2 978 students answered questions about their mental health, studies, insecurity, access to care and internships, and as expected, their answers reflected increased anxiety. Faced with the alarming results of the students’ sense of precariousness shown in ANEPF’s previous surveys, as well as its amplification by the current crisis, ANEPF decided to act by creating the “timely emergency aid” to financially support students in distress. So far, 475 pharmacy students have received this aid.
The system consists of two steps: anonymisation of the applications by a first committee of volunteers from the association, then allocation by a second committee. A total of 100 000 euros have been gathered by partners and 73 000 euros have been donated so far. ANEPF also organised a well-being week and many students joined and gave positive feedback. Students were also trained on how to manage stress and how to set up a social project. We do not intend to stop fighting student insecurities and improving the well-being of pharmacy students. That is why ANEPF launched a second session of punctual emergency aid in September 2021. We intend to make it a sustainable solution for students.
FederaÈ›ia AsociaÈ›iilor StudenÈ›ilor FarmaciÈ™ti din România (FASFR)
Campaigns
Mental health is a fundamental component of health, summing up not only the absence of disease, but also the ability of an individual to successfully integrate into family, social and professional life. Through this campaign we aim to encourage communication on this topic, reduce the social stigma associated with mental illness, promote the role of the pharmacist in observing the signs and symptoms associated with mental health problems and the importance of interprofessional collaboration in this regard.
BabeÈ™-Bolyai University, Cluj-Napoca, Romania
Within the university there is a psychotherapy clinic providing free of charge counselling to the university community (staff and students). During the pandemic, these services were provided online. Starting with the benign of the pandemic, the clinic opened new internship programmes for psychology students and thus the online presence of the clinic has been revamped to the point that it reached significantly more people. The interns also contributed to organising a series of online educational campaigns and webinars on topics related to coping with the pandemic and fostering resilience. Besides, the clinic has opened a hotline for providing short, over the phone, support sessions as an addition to the counselling sessions provided to the university community. After a while, the hotline service was extended to anyone who is affected by the pandemic, outside of the university.