Mental Health Of College Students

by Nayab T.

Tuesday, February 23, 2021 at 12:52 AM

Researchers from Boston University are exploring the precise mental health challenges that college students are facing. 

The researchers discovered that situations like depression and anxiety, and feelings of loneliness, are better than ever amongst university students. While the pandemic simply comes into play, the team thinks that those findings have to be taken into consideration in a broader context of mental health struggles. 

“Half of the college students in fall 2020 screened positive for depression and/or anxiety,” stated researcher Sarah Ketchen Lipson. “I think mental health is getting worse [across the U.S. population], and on top of that, we're now collecting more statistics on those traits than ever before. People are being more open, having an extra dialogue about it, and we’re capable of better discover that human beings are suffering.” 

The researchers performed a survey of almost 33,000 university students to better understand what mental health struggles they’re experiencing. The survey requested general questions about the participants’ mental health and additionally touched on how stressors affected their everyday lives. 

The big majority of the scholars involved in the study reported suffering from mental health and emotions of isolation, and these stories frequently impacted their day-by-day routines. More than eighty percent of the scholars shared that their mental health was a roadblock in completing assignments and dealing with different educational responsibilities. 

Now understanding this, the researchers are calling on professors to make changes that can advantage their students’ mental health. Making assignments due earlier in the day can take the strain off college students to live up all night, and gentle reminders about college students’ worth outdoor of the study room can go away a long-lasting positive impact. 

“Even in larger classes, wherein 1:1 outreach is extra difficult, teachers can send class-wide emails reinforcing the concept that they care about their college students not simply as learners, however as humans, and circulating data about campus sources for mental health and well-being,” Lipson stated. 

Stressors like the COVID-19 pandemic or mounting student loan debt aren’t probably to disappear all at once, which makes it even extra important for university students to utilize the mental health services which might be available to them. Though half of the students concerned in the survey had been involved about what their friends could think about them looking for mental health services, almost 95 percent of the scholars stated that they wouldn’t assume differently of their peers for getting help for his or her mental health. 

The researchers wish that those findings encourage more younger people to apply the resources available to them before they reach the crisis level. Finding healthy ways to deal with and manage anxiety and depression can benefit university students beyond their 4 years of school. 

“Often college students will only searching for help once they discover themselves in a mental health crisis, requiring more urgent resources,” stated Lipson. “But how can we create structures to foster wellness earlier than they attain that point? All college students have to receive mental health education, ideally as a part of the required curriculum.”