College Students’ Mental Health Improves for the Second Year in a Row
BU public health researcher and national Healthy Minds Study principal investigator Sarah K. Lipson points to colleges’ efforts to address students’ overall well-being and mental health
College Students’ Mental Health Improves for the Second Year in a Row
BU public health researcher and national Healthy Minds Study principal investigator Sarah K. Lipson points to colleges’ efforts to address students’ overall well-being and mental health
Mental health has become one of the most pressing issues on college campuses across the country. The COVID pandemic was shown to have a major impact on college students’ mental health, but there’s finally a bit of good news: for the second year in a row, the Healthy Minds Study of 100,000-plus US college students, coled by Boston University, shows an improvement in their mental health—and a decrease in symptoms of depression, anxiety, and thoughts of suicide—compared to previous years. What’s more, an increased number of young people are seeking out mental health care and support.
Healthy Minds principal investigator Sarah K. Lipson, a BU School of Public Health associate professor of health law, policy, and management, says while it is promising to see two consecutive years of improved mental health outcomes—this year, 38 percent of undergraduates experienced moderate or severe depression symptoms, down from the peak of 44 percent in 2022—she is wary of describing it as a trend just yet.
“This current academic year—which of course includes the stress and uncertainty surrounding the upcoming election—will be important for monitoring trends in student outcomes,” she says. “While I very much hope that we will continue to see improvements, we will need a few more years of data showing changes in the intended direction before we feel confident pointing to a definitive trend.”
The study was administered online during the 2023-2024 academic year through the Healthy Minds Network, an annual national project Lipson coleads with researchers at the University of California, Los Angeles, the University of Michigan, and Wayne State University. Students from 196 universities responded in 2023-2024.
There’s Still Work to Be Done
While data show college students’ mental well-being seems to be moving in a positive direction, mental illness continues to be highly prevalent among college students.
The proportion of students indicating that they had “seriously considered attempting suicide in the past year” peaked at 15 percent in the 2021-2022 academic year, dropping one percentage point in each of the past two years. Rates of eating disorders dropped one percent over the past two years (now at 13 percent), and nonsuicidal self-injury dropped 3 percent (to 26 percent). The number of students seeking therapy or counseling who were shown to need it stood at 61 percent, two percentage points higher than last year’s number.
Read tips for how faculty and teachers can help take the pressure off of students here.
About 60 percent of students reported that they “lack companionship,” and slightly higher numbers reported that they feel “left out” and “isolated from others.”
Healthy Minds also asks questions to measure flourishing, which describes positive well-being—students’ satisfaction with relationships, self-esteem, and optimism. There were yearly declines from about 2015 to 2022, reaching a low of 32 percent in 2021-2022, at the height of the pandemic. The numbers have improved since (38 percent of students met the threshold for flourishing this year). Still, a decade ago, over 50 percent of students taking the Healthy Minds survey met the threshold for flourishing.
When asked which factors might be contributing to the improvements in students’ mental health, Lipson starts with the fact that there is more stability and opportunities to socially connect, compared to life during the pandemic, when classes and club meetings happened via Zoom. Moreover, in the last five years, she believes colleges and universities have done an excellent job prioritizing student mental health.
“Many schools are taking what we think of as a public health approach to student mental health, meaning that they are focused not just on treatment, but also on prevention and overall well-being and efforts to support student mental health,” Lipson says. The Healthy Minds Network collects examples of the effectiveness of colleges’ preventive interventions (like programs, services, and policies) to help students’ well-being, with plans to continue monitoring these over the coming years.
Mental Health at Boston University
Kara Cattani, director of behavioral medicine at Student Health Services, says that, overall, BU is seeing trends similar to the Healthy Minds Study: the number of students here seeking services and the number of treatment sessions offered climbed until the pandemic, then held steady, increased in the 2021-2022 school year, and finally decreased slightly (4 percent) this past academic year.
She says it’s important to keep this recent decrease in perspective and note that the current demand for services represents a 60 percent increase from what her office saw a decade ago. “It’s clear that we still have an important need for robust services to support the mental health and well-being of BU students,” she says. “As is true across the country, our students most commonly seek treatment for anxiety—generalized, social anxiety, and academic distress—and depression.”
Her charge at BU Behavioral Medicine is ensuring that students can receive help if needed. To that end, the team offers clinical services (including individual and group therapy, psychiatry, and crisis support), referral services for students needing outside care, and important trainings, such as the Terriers Connect program, which teaches suicide prevention for students and ways of helping others in distress. This year, Behavioral Medicine also partnered with Togetherall, a company that offers around-the-clock virtual, anonymous peer support and clinical tools, including the ability to ask a therapist a question.
BU students can also access support through the Sexual Assault Response & Prevention Center, Student Wellbeing, and Health Promotion & Prevention, which offers in-person peer listening, mindfulness programs, campus-wide mental health screening days, and informational resources to help students navigate campus mental health services.
“Mental health has become a conversation a lot more people are willing to have lately,” says Tori Ingulli (CAS’25, COM’25), who volunteers with All Ears, a free and confidential peer listening program open to any BU student seeking a supportive, nonjudgmental space to talk with a fellow student. “Even if it’s just acknowledging that something isn’t going well in your life. And there are now a lot of the programs on campus, compared to when I was a freshman, that aim to get the word out about peer support and mental health.”
Giulia Bailey (CAS’25) is cochair of the Student Government Mental Health Committee, a group advocating for the well-being of the undergraduate population at BU. Because she often thinks about mental health—both in her student government role and because she majors in psychology—Bailey says she notices more conversation and less stigma among students about visiting BU Behavioral Medicine should a problem arise.
“During the pandemic, a lot of people found out maybe they were depressed once they stopped working or attending school, and I think now people are aware and trying to create that happy balance that they didn’t have before,” she says. “I know that’s true for me and my friends.”
BU students seeking support can reach out to Student Health Services; faculty, staff, and employee family members can contact BU’s Faculty & Staff Assistance Office for help with work and life challenges.
This work is a self-funded study, with colleges and universities paying a modest fee to have the survey administered and to receive the data reports.
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