Survey Finds 70% of US College Students Struggle with Mental Health, Few Seek Help

Universities in the United States are facing a mental health crisis, with about 70 percent of students admitting they have been dealing with mental health problems since they started college, according to a US News survey.

The Generation Lab report, which surveyed 3,649 college students in March 2024, found that most students said that they needed to receive mental health care, but most did not ask for it. According to the same, only 37 percent of students said they looked for mental health resources at their college, Erudera.com reports.

The reasons why many students decided not to ask for help include previous negative experiences, doubts that mental health care would help them, fear of social stigma, cost concerns, and uncertainty on how to access help resources.

Of the students responding to the survey and expressing the need for mental health help, 77 percent had successfully accessed mental health services, with 70 percent getting support immediately or a week later.

Only 7 percent said they accessed mental health care after more than three months. About 69 percent of respondents said they received sufficient support. Mostly, students expressed concerns like suicidal thoughts, self-harm, anxiety, depression, trauma, and drug abuse.

Psychotherapist Irina Ciureanu said that chronic stress and burnout that students usually experience due to societal pressures, academic stress, and high expectations, among other things, could lead to anxiety and depression.

Speaking to Erudera, Ciureanu stressed the need to introduce mental health education into the curriculum, especially after high rates of mental health problems among students reported in recent years.

Another survey of 2,574 students in the United States and Canada, conducted by Wiley, one of the world’s largest publishing companies, found that over 80 percent of respondents faced emotional challenges since the COVID-19 pandemic.

Of these students, 59 percent of students have been struggling with anxiety, 58 percent said they have been experiencing burnout, and 43 percent are struggling with depression.

“Student mental and emotional health continues to grow as a problem on college campuses. We urge college officials and instructors to seek out ways to help reduce the strain it creates for students, staff members, and loved ones alike,” Wiley Group vice president Amanda Miller said.

Other studies support findings that college students are in significant numbers struggling with their mental health. According to research based on responses from more than 390,000 participants in the Healthy Minds Study, an annual web-based survey, post-traumatic stress disorder diagnoses among students in college have more than doubled between 2017 and 2022.