Mental Health and Innovation for French Higher-education Students

To fully grasp mental health, it is essential to understand and assess it by considering all the factors that affect it: family environment, school environment, emotional relationships, living conditions, social networks, etc. The symptom network approach takes into account a network of overlapping, multi-layered interactions. These networks evolve over time and are constantly mediated by other nodes, i.e., symptoms, which allows for the identification of markers (vulnerabilities or comorbidities) and the establishment of the dynamics of causal mechanisms. Mental health is thus a sum of stable states within a dynamic network structure of symptoms. Beyond determining prevalence, the SMILE project therefore aims for an analytical, network-based approach to symptoms of mental health and the inherent vulnerabilities of students through a self-administered questionnaire designed to examine various cognitive, emotional, social, and behavioral functions, and to address this new approach. The SMILE study could also help advance public health and identify the impact of university actions on the mental health of their own students.