ArticleJournal of health services research & policy2024
University students' access to mental health services: A qualitative study of the experiences of health service professionals through the lens of candidacy in England.
Article in Journal of health services research & policy, 2024. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 2 papers.
What it found
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The trial behind it
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Who cites it
2 citing papers in PubMed, 3 citations in OpenAlex.
- A scoping review of how the candidacy framework has been used in research on access to general practice.Journal of health services research & policy · 2026Article
- "A PhD is just going to somehow break you": A qualitative study exploring the role of peer support for doctoral students.PloS one · 2025Article
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
6 authors at 3 institutions in 1 country.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
objectivesIn order to develop a better understanding of students' access to mental health services, we explored the experiences of health care professionals interacting with university students with mental health problems.
methodsWe interviewed 23 professionals working across university advice and counselling services, NHS general practice, crisis, and psychological services in North and East London between June 2022 and January 2023. Our approach drew on reflexive thematic analysis and the principles of abductive analysis. The notion of candidacy - that is, how different needs are deemed deserving of health service attention - was particularly helpful to our understanding of the ongoing phenomenon of interest in the data.
resultsEach student's access to mental health support was highly contingent on the student's dynamic social context and the pressures and organisation of the local health system. Professionals described how different students viewed different needs as deserving of health service attention. Which students reached the professional's service depended on the resources and relationships a student could draw upon, and the service's relative permeability. Once there, what action professionals took was strongly influenced by the professional's service expertise, resource constraints, the relationships the professional's service had with other organisations, the students' wishes, and whether students regarded treatment offers as acceptable.
conclusionsCandidacy offers a useful lens to view university students' access to mental health support. Access appears to be an increasingly intricate task for students, given the fragmented service landscape, surging demand for mental health care and challenges of emerging adulthood. Our findings suggest that policy goals to increase use of mental health services are unlikely to improve outcomes for students without policy makers and health systems giving holistic consideration of inter-service relationships and available resources.
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Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.