The importance of mental health has recently been highlighted in society, both because of the increasing prevalence of mental health problems and because of the ever growing awareness of the great impact that mental health has on the quality of life. Young people are a particularly vulnerable group, therefore, it is important to ensure that mental health prevention is systematically implemented, including within the educational system. Students are exposed to various social, economic and environmental stressors during their studies, so prevention at the higher education level seems reasonable. While higher education systems abroad have already strengthened their mental health prevention measures, there is still a lot of room for improvement in Slovenia. In my master's thesis, I focused on students' opinions on the current state of mental health prevention at university level, the different possibilities of developing integrated prevention activities, and which prevention interventions proved to be the most useful and relevant for students. A convenience sample of Slovenian students (N = 238) took part in the survey and completed the Questionnaire on Preventive Interventions in the Higher Education Environment that I had previously developed for the purposes of this thesis. The first part of the questionnaire included demographic variables and questions regarding mental health problems, then the second part included questions regarding the current situation and knowledge of help resources, and the last part of the questionnaire asked the participants to evaluate interventions that could be implemented in the higher education system. The questionnaire was administered via the online platform “1ka”. The data analysis showed the need for the implementation of an integrated mental health prevention programme in the Slovenian academic environment, as more than half of the participants reported that they had already experienced mental health problems. Moreover, students perceived the current situation as relatively poor, and found the proposed interventions useful and their implementation relevant. The survey provided the first insight into the possibility of designing an integrated programme to strengthen students' mental health during their studies, as well as guidelines for further research on mental health prevention within the higher education system.
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