# 2 Insights from tutors

Academic staff can play a vital role in students’ university experience and support networks. To understand this further, a study was conducted with Open University staff who support students with a mental health condition (MHC) (Simons and Macaulay, 2025). This section of the course is based on the part of the study that focused on staff who had direct course-related contact with students. Interviews were conducted with 39 associate lecturers across first year health, education and language curriculum areas. For the purposes of this section, the staff are referred to as ‘tutors’ but it also recognised that the title of the staff may vary across educational settings.

Two overall themes emerged from the interviews:

1. the needs of students
2. the needs of tutors.

OpenLearn - Supporting university students with a mental health condition
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