Students’ mental health: new psychological counselling services

All audiences

“Mental health is on top of our priorities.” With this title, the Ministry in charge of higher education takes stock of all mechanisms implemented over the last months to provide struggling students with a listening service and concrete help. This is the case with the “Mon soutien psy” mechanism, which is open to everyone and offers 12 sessions of psychological support per year. For students, this can now be combined with the “Santé Psy étudiant” mechanism.

Mental health has been declared Great National Cause in 2025 and is a major issue for the French government and the Ministry of higher education and research specifically. According to the ministry, “the psychological well-being of students has been a subject of particular attention” for many years, with many tools at students’ disposal. And the ministry completes that “research is buoyant, with among others an ambitious programme, PROPSY, funded by the France 2030 mechanism”.

Two types of psychological consultations

Among all existing mechanisms, the spotlights are put on free psychological consultations. Two types exist:

the “Santé Psy Étudiants” network. The mechanism allows all students who want to ask for psychological support from a partner psychologist. Students may receive twelve free 45-min long sessions, with no advance of fee and possibly renewable. About 1,700 psychologists are part of this network, and since its creation in 2021, more than 100,000 students have benefitted from support through this mechanism;
the “Mon soutien psy” mechanism, open to all in France. This mechanism allows the reimbursement of up to twelve sessions of psychological follow-up per year. These twelve sessions include a face-to-face assessment session, then up to eleven follow-up sessions. They are handled by a network of 5,000 partner psychologists from the health insurance. For students, “Mon soutien psy” can be stacked with “Santé Psy Etudiant”, as explains the French government’s information website.

So, all students in France may enjoy (at least) 24 sessions of psychological assistance.

New mechanisms in research

Regarding research in mental health, the French ministry puts the spotlights on PROPSY, a “research programme that will transform psychiatry”. Focused on “the most incapacitating psychiatric troubles” (bipolarity, persistent depression, autism and schizophrenia), PROPSY relies on precision psychiatry to “revolutionize patients’ diagnostics and care”.

The programme, which received an 80 million euros funding over seven years as part of the France 2030 plan, was launched in 2022. The programme is driven by Inserm with the CNRS and support from the FondaMental foundation, which supports exclusively research and innovation in mental health. With 23 targeted research objectives, and 2,500 patients and 500 control individual in a follow-up cohort, this new programme has set as overall objective:

to improve the diagnostic and treatments to develop customised approaches;
improve research and innovation in psychiatry by structuring a biomedical branch dedicated to psychiatric diseases;
attract and train new talents to improve the appeal of occupations in relation with mental health.

Podcasts by Santé Psy Etudiant

To complement the information mechanism about students’ mental health, the French ministry of higher education has launched the podcast Kaavan by Santé Psy Étudiant. Every two weeks, the podcast “explores the world of mental health through various life experiences”. He welcomes personalities, experts and anonymous witnesses to “dive into intimate discussions where everyone can find an echo of their own journey”.

These podcasts, available free of charge on all listening platforms, are aimed primarily at young people experiencing difficulties. The aim is to inform them in a more entertaining way, but also to reassure and advise them. The guest on the 23 April 2025 episode is Kevin Mayer, 33, double world decathlon champion and world record holder in the discipline since 2018. In this podcast, he talks about the role of mental health in his day-to-day life as a top sportsman and in the more difficult moments of his career. Singers Eddy de Pretto and Gringe, and journalist Salomé Saqué have already shared their stories. These stories “help to de-stigmatise mental health, break down isolation and give young people the keys to taking care of themselves”, concludes the ministry.