The Healthy-Students project has received funding from the ANR under the JCJC 2026 call for proposals

In July 2026, the Healthy-Students project, led by Mélissa Macalli from the Healthy team, was selected for funding by the ANR under the JCJC 2026 call for proposals.

A project aimed at developing a digital intervention to encourage students to seek mental health care

Despite the high prevalence of mental health problems and suicidal behaviour amongst students, a significant proportion of them do not ask for mental health support or treatment.
There are thought to be a number of factors behind this trend: difficulty in recognising one’s own distress, a lack of information about available resources, stigma, or a reluctance to take the step of asking for help.

The Healthy-Students project, led within the BPH by Mélissa Macalli from the Healthy team, aims to address this challenge by developing and evaluating a digital intervention co-designed with students, researchers and healthcare professionals.
The intervention will be rolled out via the Prisme study website in partnership with the Espace Santé Etudiants. This platform, which has recruited over 3,000 students from the University of Bordeaux, aims to monitor students’ health and offer initiatives to promote mental health and prevent psychological distress.

“Given the prevalence of mental health issues amongst students, we must also address what happens before they request care: helping students to recognise their difficulties, better understand what they are going through, and know where to turn for help.
With Healthy-Students, we aim to develop a solution created in collaboration with the students themselves, and rigorously evaluate its effectiveness.”

– Melissa Macalli

The project will be structured around three main stages:

• Co-designing a digital intervention adapted to students’ needs and situations, using a participatory research approach;
• To evaluate its effectiveness in promoting help-seeking intentions and behaviours, as well as in improving mental health indicators in the long term;
• To identify any differences in effectiveness across student profiles, particularly in terms of gender and socio-economic status, in order to contribute to a more equitable approach to mental health prevention.

The selection of the project for funding under the ANR’s ‘Young Researchers’ (JCJC) call will enable this approach to be developed and evaluated over a three-year period, with the aim of generating scientific knowledge as well as a framework that can, in the long term, be transferred to other higher education institutions.

Scientific impact

Healthy-Students addresses several current research gaps. Whilst digital mental health interventions are developing rapidly, few of them have been rigorously evaluated for their ability to encourage the use of support and care, particularly amongst students.

The project will first produce a proof of concept for a co-designed digital intervention, and will then examine not only its effectiveness, but also how it works, for which students and under what conditions.

Another unique aspect of the project will be to examine co-creation itself as a subject of research, in order to gain a better understanding of how to effectively involve future users, professionals and researchers in the development of a health intervention. These methodological insights may prove useful beyond the field of student mental health.

Sociétal and public health impact 

The primary aim of Healthy-Students is to help reduce the gap between the scale of mental health difficulties amongst students and their low uptake of care. By intervening at an early stage, before difficulties get worse or a crisis arises, the project aims to facilitate the identification of needs and access to appropriate resources.

Ultimately, the findings could help universities and their health services to better identify unmet needs and strengthen their prevention strategies. The project could also contribute to discussions amongst public health stakeholders on the development of scientific-based digital interventions.

A project based on collaboration and interdisciplinarity

Healthy-Students builds on the complementary expertise brought together within the BPH and on national and international collaborations.

In particular, the project builds on around ten years of research into students’ mental health, carried out by members of the project team and within the BPH, with contributions from Christophe Tzourio, Cédric Galéra, Shérazade Kinouani, Tiffany Bourgeois, Rodolphe Thiébaut and Marie Tournier.

The project also benefits from external collaborations, notably with Margot Morgiève, a sociologist and Inserm researcher in Paris, and Marie-Claude Geoffroy, a psychologist and associate professor at McGill University in Canada.

This team adopts a resolutely interdisciplinary approach, at the intersection of public health, psychiatry and sociology. This complementary approach will enable student mental health to be addressed from the perspectives of students’ needs, their healthcare-seeking behaviours and the scientific evaluation of interventions.