Youth mental health has become a prominent focus for education systems worldwide, and the UAE is no exception. Making matters even more dire, findings indicate that nearly 13% of students have struggled with suicidal ideations.

In the UAE, efforts are underway to support students in navigating the pressures of modern life, from academic demands to the influence of social media. Recognizing that mental health plays a vital role in student development, institutions are working to create nurturing environments that promote resilience, self-awareness, and access to support when needed. These initiatives reflect a broader commitment to empowering youth with the tools to thrive both academically and emotionally.

For those who have been closely monitoring the situation, these figures are not surprising. As Yara Kamel, Clinical Success Coach at Workplace Options, explains, youth mental health issues in the UAE have been steadily rising due to a number of ‘interconnected’ factors. “High academic pressure, parental expectations, and the competitive school environment in the region all place a considerable burden on students,” she says. “Often, we see these pressures lead to heightened stress, anxiety, and even burnout for these young minds.”

Additionally, the ever-increasing prevalence of social media—through which today’s university students do just about everything—has had a substantial and well-documented impact on youth mental health through the years. Findings from the most recent Arab Youth Survey reveal that up to 60 percent of students believe that social media is having a negative impact on their mental wellbeing: a cycle of harm that most unfortunately say they cannot break away from (in the same survey, 74 percent of respondents said they were struggling to disconnect from social media, despite their awareness of its impact on their health). Compounding this issue is the UAE’s alarming shortage of mental health professionals and exorbitant counseling costs, with fewer than one counselor for every 100,000 people and average fees exceeding $163 per hour—leaving students with severely limited options for help.

Creating a psychologically safe and supportive environment for students remains a key area of focus in the region. Emirati leaders have demonstrated strong commitment to this cause, exemplified by the launch of the Dh105 million ‘Mental Wealth Framework’ by His Royal Highness, Sheikh Hamdan bin Mohammed, Crown Prince of Dubai. This initiative aims to enhance students’ psychological well-being as part of the broader Dubai Social Agenda 33, which envisions the emirate as the ‘world’s best destination for living, working, and visiting.
The framework, which consists of 10 initiatives to be carried out over the next 5 years, seeks in large part to strengthen educational institutions’ ability to detect, combat, and prevent psychological distress in students through increased educational and awareness-raising efforts, training initiatives, improved monitoring methods, and better access to care.

The reason for the emphasis on schools as a driver of population-wide wellbeing is threefold: First and foremost, university has always been a stressful period for students, marked by major transitions such as moving away from home, living with new people, and managing increased responsibilities. Whether a coincidence or consequence, this is also when common mental health disorders begin to emerge, with research showing that up to 75 percent of adolescents experience mental illness by the age of 24—making this a critical time to educate people on the importance of maintaining wellbeing and recognizing and responding to signs of distress.

Secondly, given younger generations’ growing yet often elusive presence online, and the subsequent loss of physical communities or gathering spaces, addressing mental health in schools—one of the few remaining epicenters of in-person assembly—has become paramount to making a sizeable impact on their lasting wellbeing.

Lastly—considering that the very purpose of higher education is to equip students with essential, lifelong skills to be carried with them into their professional and personal lives, using this opportunity to educate them about the importance of health maintenance skills, self-care practices, and wellbeing strategies is not only apt but necessary to produce capable workers, innovative thinkers, and facilitators of regional wellbeing and prosperity.

What This Means for Institutions of Higher Education

That said, when it comes to how institutions can implement this plan, the framework proposes several key initiatives centered around:

• Early detection
• Intervention
• Enhancement
• Prevention

Regarding the early detection of mental health issues, the framework urges institutions to enhance and integrate mental health education, training, and monitoring efforts to ensure that troubled students are promptly identified and provided with timely intervention before their problems escalate into something more severe. Additionally, education and training—along with access to counseling services, holistic wellbeing programs, and app-based support—are also promoted as ways to guarantee such timely and furthermore effective intervention.

To enhance students’ psychological wellbeing and prevent the onset of mental illness, the framework underscores the need for an informed and supportive community, one that includes the active participation of parents, teachers, students, and administration alike to foster a sense of belonging, trust, safety and security, and consequently, resilience and adaptability. Finally, to ensure the relevance, accuracy, and effectiveness of these efforts, institutions are encouraged to partner with mental health professionals who can provide both the resources and insights needed to meet the unique needs of their student body.

Getting Started: How Workplace Options (WPO) Can Help

Bearing these in mind, there are several key steps institutions can take to bring the framework to life, starting with forming a partnership with a holistic wellbeing solutions provider who can help.

By collaborating with a provider like Workplace Options, institutions can aspire to create and execute an integrated, comprehensive approach to student wellbeing—one that leverages real-time data to guide strategy development and measure its effectiveness, offers informed cross-referrals to a variety of solutions provided under one entity, and tailors learning and development strategies to address observed gaps in mental health literacy, bystander intervention, psychological safety, and more. With ongoing guidance and support from professionals with extensive industry experience, institutions can strive to achieve key objectives such as:

1. Enacting effective policies, procedures, and monitoring efforts – (Early Detection)

Undoubtedly, the best way to help students is to know what exactly is wrong. Are students struggling with loneliness? Bullying? Are they stressed financially? Academically? Are they finding it hard to maintain a healthy routine—getting enough sleep, eating well, and exercising regularly? Knowing the answers to these questions is essential to providing the right support. With the help of WPO’s consulting group, institutions can establish effective methods for uncovering such answers, using tools such as psychosocial, wellbeing, and comprehensive needs assessments; focus groups, student surveys, and one-on-one interviews; internal reviews; and more.

Likewise, equally important to understanding what is wrong is knowing how to respond. As such, policies that are explicit about how staff are to respond to certain scenarios—together with staff-wide training on how and when to put those policies into practice—are paramount to ensuring a fair, unified, and thorough approach to wellbeing issues. Once again, with ongoing guidance from WPO’s team of expert consultants, institutional leaders can strive to adopt meaningful policies that are compliant with local laws, relevant to the needs of their students, and actionable for staff, and deliver comprehensive training that enables campus leaders to recognize when a situation calls for intervention, and how they may proceed.

2. Offering holistic wellbeing support to students – (Intervention)

As students work to balance their growing academic, social, career, and everyday responsibilities, the need for multidimensional support becomes clear. In addition to traditional counseling services, maintaining students’ mental health also requires the support of life coaching and work-life assistance services that can empower students to adopt healthier habits, develop essential life skills, build up a network of internal and external resources, and improve their resilience and readiness for stress. Fortunately, WPO’s student support program is designed to provide just that.

Encompassing short-term, solution-focused counseling from licensed professionals, support from certified life-coaches, and tailored referrals and information services from experienced work-life specialists, Student Assist is uniquely equipped to provide students with customized support needed to overcome a range of challenges, such as:

• Coping with stress, uncertainty, anxiety, depression, burnout, and suicidality
• Getting a good night’s sleep, maintaining a healthy diet, building and sticking to a balanced workout routine
• Conquering feelings of loneliness, self-doubt, or social anxiety in order to make new friends
• Improving or maintaining a strong academic performance, securing tutoring or other academic support services as needed
• Navigating student loans and tuition fees, housing costs, and other financial responsibilities

And with these services all in one place, students can benefit from cross-referrals to other resources and benefits that best fit their individual situations, ensuring they receive the timely and effective care they need.

3. Providing flexible and autonomous support – (Enhancement)

In a similar vein, not only do students require a diversity of support to maintain strong mental wellbeing, but they also need a diversity of pathways to access that support. At a time when so many students are getting their first taste of true independence, while others fight to gain a better sense of autonomy over various aspects of their lives, making care feel like their decision or within their control is crucial to ensuring that they actually take advantage of the support available to them. Additionally, with so much going on in their lives, some students may find it difficult to commit to certain support formats, be it in-person, video, or telephonic counseling. It’s for this reason that, somewhat paradoxically, experts recommend app-based support as an effective way to engage students.

“App-based support can be a game changer for students’ mental health,” attests Yara Kamel, Clinical Success Coach at Workplace Options. “It’s incredibly convenient, offering 24/7 access to help directly from their phones. And with so many students now accustomed to texting as their primary form of communication, it can also help to make mental health conversations feel more informal and less intimidating, driving greater utilization of services.”

With wellness apps such as WPO’s iConnectYou and newly launched Balancy, institutions can empower students to seek care at a time and in a way that works best for them. Thanks to the apps’ various features, including personalized content, mood-tracking, journaling, and self-assessment tools, students may also be encouraged to reflect on and manage their own care and health maintenance, and make cognitive-behavioral changes inspired by insights gained from the apps.

In addition to app-based support, when it comes to instilling students with the knowledge and skills needed to make better health management decisions, research has also proven the value of mindfulness interventions as an effective way to enhance students’ emotional intelligence, self-awareness, and responsive decision-making. Through solutions like WPO’s Aware Mindfulness Program, students may reap the benefits of improved focus, health habits, stress management, and resilience, and cultivate, learn how to stay in the present moment, and make informed, responsible decisions about how they live, work, and study. Such programs can help institutions solidify students’ commitment to their own wellbeing by turning the power over to them to decide what issues they want to focus on and how they might adjust their behaviors.

4. Training students and staff on the tenets of psychological wellbeing – (Prevention)

Lasting, impactful change on campus can only be realized through the unified effort of everyone involved. Strong communities are not built in isolation, but are born from collaboration, connection, and a shared purpose and vision. Thus, to create a truly psychologically safe and supportive environment requires campus-wide training on core wellbeing topics to ensure that everyone understands the role they play in taking better care of themselves and their peers. With WPO’s comprehensive catalogue of global learning solutions, institutional leaders may choose from a range of training sessions to deliver to students, faculty, and staff, covering topics like:

• Embracing change
• Fostering a sense of belonging
• Developing a growth mindset
• Balance not burnout
• The power of self-awareness
• Life beyond digital devices
• Overcoming imposter syndrome
• Setting healthy boundaries
• Tackling loneliness
• Calming the anxious mind
• Demystifying counseling
• Staying optimistic

And much more…

5. Building a strong network of wellbeing ambassadors – (Prevention)

Finally, by getting students and staff involved, institutional leaders may benefit from the added support of internal ‘experts’ or ‘champions’ of wellbeing. While trained professionals remain paramount to helping students overcome wellbeing challenges, research continuously shows that students most often turn to their peers for support in times of crisis. That said, having individuals on campus who are sufficiently informed on how to recognize and respond to signs of distress, who are familiar with the services and resources available to students through their university, and who can successfully engage in meaningful conversation with peers and guide them to the right support can have a tremendous impact on students’ overall wellbeing and their help-seeking and self-care behaviors.

Through WPO’s Wellbeing Ambassador Program, exemplary peers may receive the training and ongoing support they need to be effective first point of contacts for students, acting as impactful liaisons between them and the services they require. Not only do these ‘familiar’ and ‘friendly faces’ help to normalize the acts of self-care and help-seeking, but the program can also inspire students to take better care of themselves simply by way of getting involved. By cultivating an internal network of support and fostering a culture of care and wellbeing, institutions can strive to create an environment free from the threat of psychological or psychosocial harms, and abundant in the resources, support, and opportunities needed to lead a happy, healthy, and fulfilling life.

Conclusion

Just as the age-old proverb asserts that it takes a village to raise a child, so, too, does it take a strong, united community to ensure adolescents have the support they need to achieve and maintain sound mental health. Dubai’s Mental Wealth Framework has already laid the groundwork for how to build that community; now it’s time for institutions to put that plan into action. By partnering with a holistic wellbeing solutions provider like WPO, institutions can be sure to provide students with the well-rounded support needed to improve and protect all aspects of their health and guarantee greater overall wellbeing for their student body.