Where do students go first for mental health advice?

Report - 20 January 2026

We wanted to understand where students would first seek out advice about their mental health if they needed it.

We contacted all Further Education College sites to explore the possibility of attending ‘welcome week’ events. We were able to schedule visits to three sites.

At these we used an interactive voting activity and heard from 455 students.

The top three responses were:

  • 44% said they would ask family members first 

  • 32% said they would go directly to their friends 

  • 7% said they would check the internet / chat rooms/ AI

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