As Mental Health Awareness Week 2026 puts the spotlight on wellbeing, new data from the GSL Index offers a timely view of how students living in UK accommodation are feeling, and what they say would help.
The findings point to a sizeable wellbeing challenge among students living in UK accommodation. Across more than 50,000 students living in UK student accommodation in 2025/26, fewer than four in ten (37%) say they feel calm and peaceful most or all of the time. Meanwhile, nearly one in four (23%) report feeling nervous all or most of the time. Feeling nervous is particularly pronounced for UK students, who are more likely (26%) to report feeling nervous all or most of the time than international students (19%).
Responses to the Mental Health Inventory-5 (MHI-5), a widely used screening tool for psychological distress, also point to concerning levels of poor wellbeing among students living in accommodation. On the positive indicators, only about half of all respondents (49%) describe themselves as happy people most or all of the time. On the negative side, 13% report feeling downhearted most or all of the time, with a further 11% saying they feel down in the dumps on the same frequency. These figures highlight that for a sizeable minority of students, low mood is a recurring part of day-to-day life.
Of course, students are not experiencing these pressures in isolation from wider society – poor mental wellbeing, anxiety and loneliness are significant issues across the general population. But the accommodation setting matters because it is one of the few environments where students’ daily living conditions, social connections and access to support intersect.
Stress, loneliness and depression
When students are asked about their struggles, some consistent themes emerge. Stress and anxiety top the list, cited by 42% of all UK students and rising to 46% among international students. It is the single most common struggle for all students, above finding part-time work (40%), keeping up with workload (38%) and meeting new people (35%).
Loneliness registers at 21% for UK students and 24% for international students. Depression is reported by 17% and 20% respectively. A further 10% to 12% cite other mental health issues. Taken together, these figures suggest that somewhere between a third and a half of the student population is navigating a mental health challenge at any given point in the academic year.
While the figures show the scale of the issue, the open-text responses show where accommodation providers can make a tangible difference. Students rarely describe mental health in isolation. Instead, they connect it to everyday features of accommodation life: the quality of their room, the ease of meeting people, the responsiveness of staff, and whether they know where to turn when they are struggling.
The link between the physical environment and wellbeing
Students’ comments highlight the link between their physical surroundings and their mental state. Room design, natural light, and shared spaces are frequently mentioned by students as factors that affect how they feel day-to-day.
My room is facing the wrong way and gets little to no sunlight. It makes it very dark, even when sunny outside. I think this has contributed to poor mental health over the winter months especially.
Maintenance also appears repeatedly in students’ comments, suggesting that for some residents, slow or unresolved repairs can become part of a wider wellbeing issue rather than simply a facilities concern.
Better response and timely response to complaints, which would have prevented my mental health from being affected.
Isolation
Loneliness is also a recurring theme in students’ free-text responses. Students describe being physically present in crowded buildings yet feeling alone. Visitor policies, flat allocation, and the absence of communal spaces are frequently cited as structural contributors.
Visitor bans – we have been on a visitor ban since October. We can now have visitors, but only until 10 pm. I don’t like this because I haven’t made many friends in my accommodation, so I rely on outside friends, they are my support system, and sometimes I feel isolated as they can’t come and visit me.
For international students in particular, accommodation is often the only social environment available to them. As one student explains:
The accommodation is silent and almost empty, with no sense of student movement, interesting conversations, or support systems. It feels a bit too isolated at times. And for students experiencing a new environment, their accommodation is the first space to feel a sense of belonging, so something in that aspect might be useful.
Demand for mental health support
Beyond the physical and social environment, students frequently mention the absence of dedicated mental health support. Many students appear to expect accommodation providers to play a visible, supportive role in wellbeing, particularly during the transition to university life:
I would improve being able to receive advice for mental health! For someone who has not lived away from home before, the experience can be quite daunting. I would like to know better if there are services available.
The mental health of students, especially during freshers’ week, is overlooked. Acclimatisation to university life is difficult for those who have never experienced living with complete strangers. As an individual with ADD, I struggle with conversations sometimes; remembering small details is painstaking. I’ve also experienced mental health struggles with both depression and anxiety. I hope that in the future, universities consider people like me and don’t neglect people who seem to be outwardly thriving but perhaps aren’t.
Some students suggest the need for improved mental health training for accommodation support teams:
The management needs to be better mental health trained and nicer to residents.
Some students go further, proposing proactive, structured interventions:
There can be mental health check-in camps. I can understand it’s a bit hectic to organise something like this as there are many students. But something can be done in smaller sections – floor-wise or anything. Or a petting zoo also works!
Others suggest that peer-support schemes would help support their mental health:
If there was one thing I could improve about my current accommodation, it would be creating a more personalised and connected living experience through maybe a structured peer support or buddy system… moving to a new place can feel very overwhelming for many students, especially at the start.
For some students, simply having someone available to talk to is a simple but positive mental health support:
They listen to all the issues that I have going on when it comes to stressors and they also have a lot of mental health support if anyone needs it. If we need to talk to someone, there is a place that we can go to and people that we can e-mail to ask for support. Overall, I think this accommodation is also in a really good place in terms of mental health-wise.
Looking forward
The data and student comments do not suggest that accommodation providers are expected to solve the student mental health crisis on their own. Many of the drivers of poor wellbeing sit well beyond the walls of student accommodation, from academic pressure and financial stress to wider challenges around loneliness and mental health in society.
But accommodation providers do have influence over some of the conditions that shape students’ day-to-day experience. Responsive maintenance, clear communication, welcoming communal spaces, inclusive events, visitor policies, staff training and effective signposting can all make a difference to whether students feel isolated or supported.
For operators, the opportunity is to think about mental health as part of the overall residential experience rather than as a standalone service Students’ comments suggest that wellbeing is shaped just as much by the everyday details of where and how they live as it is by formal support.
Data sourced from the GSL Index 2025/26 survey of students living in UK & Ireland student accommodation. MHI-5 analysis based on responses from 53,690–53,693 students. Struggles data based on 50,400 respondents.
