Addressing Psychological Distress on College Campuses

Background:

Colleges and universities report unprecedented numbers of students in psychological distress. Nationally, nearly half of all college students report feeling so depressed that they have trouble functioning.

Purpose:

To improve the mental health and wellbeing of students, the 2006 UCLA Student Development Survey examined student success by exploring the connections between health, student development and the college environment.

Methods:

An online cross-sectional survey of 2,203 students currently enrolled at UCLA. Psychological distress was ascertained using a scale adopted from RAND, which is comprised of twelve individual items that were combined into an overall psychological distress index. Stepwise regression was used to estimate the impact of the campus environment and demographic characteristics on psychological distress.

Results:

Most (70%) respondents were female, undergraduates (72%), Asian or Asian American (43%) or Caucasian (38%) students. 27% of students were foreign born and 34% reported that English was not their first language. 27% of students reported feeling depressed at times. After adjusting for demographic characteristics, the regression model explained 53% of the variation in psychological distress (R2=0.527). 15 variables entered the regression equation, but emotional distress was the strongest contributor to greater levels of psychological distress.

Conclusions:

The mental health needs of college students have evolved. Our sample resembles the increasingly diverse and changing demographic of today's college students and these factors should be considered when evaluating students' mental health needs. Findings indicate that students are experiencing problems with psychological distress, which in turn affects their education, wellbeing and involvement in campus life activities.