University Student Mental Health – An important window of opportunity for prevention and early intervention
By Anne Duffy
Students enrolled in higher education are the future leaders of our society and global world. Student well-being and mental health are prerequisites to success in higher education. At the same time the transition to higher education coincides with a pivotal period in psychosocial and neurobiological development. It is therefore a priority to understand the determinants of university student well-being and mental health and use this evidence to develop and further refine student well-being support – at the individual, learning community and institutional levels.
With the fall season approaching and familiar changes in daylight and temperature, I am reminded back to my student days and the anticipation of the start of the new school year. As a professor and consultant psychiatrist to Student Wellness Services, similar anticipatory feelings emerge – a mix of hope and excitement related to the promise of opportunities to come and some anxiety surrounding concern about how I will manage the inevitable demands and challenges.
That said, when I was a university student, life was in many ways simpler and less fraught with stress. In those days, a B+ average would gain you admittance to most Canadian universities as an undergraduate student, the course syllabus was handed to you in hard copy and reviewed in detail at the first lecture (no need to search through complex online learning platforms or reliance on self-direction to review and digest the syllabus), employment post-graduation was a forgone conclusion, and tuition seemed manageable – even for those of us self-funded through student loans.
However, more so today than for any prior generation, university student stress is very high. More competition with ever increasing grade thresholds for admittance to undergraduate and postgraduate programs, worry about meeting higher education standards and succeeding, less certainty about career opportunities and job prospects after graduation, and concerns about making new friends and feeling connected are all top of the list of student concerns. Taken together with the fact that students are considered defacto autonomous adults responsible for navigating and managing their own learning, social life and lifestyle it is no wonder student stress levels are climbing. This taken together with the fact that the brain is a work in progress again explains the formidable challenge facing students in the transition to university - especially when it comes to “executive functions” needed to succeed in higher education and relationships such as planning, thinking flexibly and using the available information to make good judgements, controlling impulses and staying focused.
In the Special Issue of the Canadian Journal of Psychiatry dedicated to University Student Mental Health, several researchers across Canada provided new evidence about the levels and origins of student stress and patterns of symptoms related to common mental concerns associated with stress such as anxiety, depression and self-harm. In the Editorial accompanying this Series, I attempt to make the case that in Canada, as in the UK, we need to develop and coordinate evidence-based student well-being support that can be evaluated and further improved. Recently, with funding from the Rossy Foundation, the U-Flourish Centre for Student Mental Health Research has been founded bringing together lead researchers from across the country in partnership with students to translate findings into support and educational resources, guide policy, and build capacity for this emerging and important area of translational research.
Article Details
University Student Mental Health: An Important Window of Opportunity for Prevention and Early Intervention
Anne Duffy
First Published July 2, 2023
DOI: 10.1177/07067437231183747
The Canadian Journal of Psychiatry
About the Author
