Mental health issues are usually a stigma, and they are more so in the Mediterranean and Arab region. Many young people suffer in silence for reasons including lack of professional support, understanding, let alone the fear of the stigma associated with it. Also, the perception of what mental health issues are varies a lot, being often associated only to serious clinical diseases, thus excluding other forms such as psychological malaise, stress, disturbances of attention, behavioral and eating disorders etc.
Further, the professional help for this kind of health issues is very costly and unaffordable for many young people, especially students with no income of their own.
Suicide cases among the young are rising, with mental health issues a major factor behind this.
In 2020, mental health issues among the young people were aggravated by the Covid-19 pandemic and the havoc it created on many levels.

Al-Fanar Media and UNIMED want to conduct a poll to assess the situation and establish how much support the youth in the Euro-Mediterranean region get from their universities when they encounter mental health issues. The poll would be the basis to build on its findings and conduct a series of stories tackling how common and widespread such issues are among university students. Are university deans, higher education officials and administrative staff aware of the magnitude of this problem? And what are they doing about it? Are there enough resources and allocations devoted to help students with such issues?
We suggest the following questions to be included in a poll measuring how widespread mental health issues is among university students in the Euro-Mediterranean countries, the amount of help the students need and get, if and how Covid-19 has impacted their mental health, and how universities and the Euro-Mediterranean higher education officials respond to the challenges of mental health issues among the students, academics and administrative staff.

Please fill in the survey by July 14th, 2023.