This year’s Mental Health Week theme is recovery in peace. For students, it is just as crucial to talk about the space to act – the possibility to live and function in one role at a time. Despite increased enthusiasm for studying, more than one third of higher education students experience exhaustion during their studies, and 15.5% feel only a little or not at all confident about their future. Significant psychological strain is experienced by 29% of higher education students (KOTT 2024).

When uncertainty about livelihood, housing and studies is high, the solution cannot be found in individual students’ ability to stretch themselves further, but in a system that encourages and supports them better than today.

“The Government has itself stated that raising the level of education and competence is a question of survival for Finland. Cuts to core funding damage exactly what the competence level is built on – students’ ability to study and the quality of education. Instead of cuts, we must be able to envision a future where investing in competence does not require a recovery period when entering working life,” sums up SAMOK Vice President Sanja Laitinen-Lindelöf.

“It is pointless to expect miracles in workplaces from students who have been burned out. The efforts made to raise the level of competence may end up as mere decorations in education statistics if we fail to pay sufficient attention to students’ coping and ability to study,” continues SAMOK’s senior advisor in well-being policy Jere Tapio.

Housing and access to education are also mental health issues. The escalating housing crisis makes it harder to find reasonably priced homes and narrows the opportunity to study where one’s place of study actually is. As livelihoods weaken and housing costs rise, wellbeing-eroding worries are piling up on those who already have the least room to manoeuvre.

Students’ income is directly linked to mental health. 19.4% of higher education students experience their livelihood as very tight and insecure, and almost half (48.5%) see their financial situation as an obstacle to starting a family (KOTT 2024). Of those who have taken out a study loan, 14.7% doubt their ability to repay it. This does not build confidence in the future – it increases anxiety and a sense of having no prospects. During Mental Health Week, it is honest to state that if a student’s everyday life rests on the risk of debt and a scant income, talk of strengthening wellbeing rings hollow.

Yet the situation is not hopeless. Young people’s political interest and willingness to have an impact are on the rise. SAMOK believes that when transitions from studies to working life are made smooth, when mental health services are genuinely accessible and opportunities to participate and influence are part of everyday life, we build resilience between generations – the capacity both to cope and to influence the surrounding society.

SAMOK’s key solutions:

• An income level that enables full-time studies and the building of wellbeing and a future
• Strong and stable core funding to secure effective support services
• Accessible mental health services and evidence-based preventive work
• Strengthening inclusion, democratic competence and equality

Further information:

Jere Tapio, Specialist in Welfare Policy
+358 40 760 9463
[email protected]

Sanja Laitinen-Lindelöf, Vice President of the Board
+358 45 325 9997
[email protected]