Addressing depression on college campuses

Background/Significance:

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 well-being 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. Depression was ascertained using a scale adopted from RAND, which is comprised of eight individual items that were combined into an overall depression index. Stepwise regression was used to estimate the impact of the campus environment and demographic characteristics on depression.

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 depression (R2=0.526). 16 variables entered the regression equation, but emotional distress was the strongest contributor to higher levels of depression.

Conclusions:

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