Aberdeen launches new wellbeing podcast

Universities UK’s Stepchange Framework looks at student mental health and wellbeing through four ‘domains’ of Learn, Support, Work and Live. The places in which students live must be supportive of their health and wellbeing, as the following example shows.

“BeWell” is the University of Aberdeen’s dedicated student wellbeing campaign, designed to provide information and support to students.

During the Covid-19 pandemic, the University launched a podcast series to expand its digital wellbeing support and connect the student and staff community when meeting in person wasn’t possible. The BeWell podcast is hosted by Wellbeing Advisor Bekah Walker who is joined each week by different guests from the University’s student and staff community to discuss and explore a variety of topical wellbeing issues. The series, which provides lived experience views, does not shy away from challenging conversations, with the first episode discussing mental health through the lens of race issues.

The podcast has been very successful and has seen over 900 downloads (as of November 2021) with students listening from all across the globe. Feedback has been extremely positive with demand and popularity growing throughout the series. As such, the University of Aberdeen will be launching a second series later this month which will build on issues previously discussed as well as exploring a number of new wellbeing related topics which have been voted on by students. The podcast supports the University’s Wellbeing Strategy and identified student pressure points.