Make it Measurable: Assessing Psychological Distress, Wellbeing and Resilience at Scale in Higher Education

Abstract

There is an ever-increasing focus on the importance of addressing the mental health of students across the higher education sector. Measuring psychological distress or symptoms of common mental disorders as a proxy for mental health does however provide a limited picture of someone’s mental health status. There is a need to comprehensively measure mental health via outcomes of psychological distress combined with “positive” and “adaptive” states of mental health such as mental wellbeing and resilience. This paper describes a study of 905 students in which an online mental health and wellbeing platform was used to measure the mental health of students, all the while providing real-time individual reports to each individual student. The data provides evidence of high levels of psychological distress (i.e. anxiety) and low levels of mental wellbeing and resilience in students, relative to population norms, with merely 18.6% of students demonstrating optimal scores on all outcomes. Contrary to predictions we found no evidence of poorer wellbeing amongst international students when compared to domestic students. The results indicate that complimenting measurement of distress with measurement of positive and adaptive states can more comprehensively capture the precarious mental status of our tertiary students. Providing this measurement in a scalable and targeted way provides universities and its students the opportunity to provide and use mental health interventions based on the needs of particular cohorts of students, moving beyond resource-intense but intermittent or untargeted approaches to intervention.

Testing the Differential Impact of an Internet-Based Mental Health Intervention on Outcomes of Well-being and Psychological Distress During COVID-19: Uncontrolled Intervention Study

“…This increased rate may partly be attributed to the result of the pandemic but may also be explained by the fact that our sample stemmed from 2 different population pools: the general adult population and tertiary university students. Previous studies have demonstrated that mental health outcomes in students are worse across many domains than in the general population [ 51 , 91 , 92 ], which was supported in our study. These findings first elicit the need to thoroughly investigate and improve the mental health of, demands on, and lifestyle of our tertiary students [ 93 ], but second, highlights an area that requires the attention of researchers who may use student cohorts for their mental health research and wish to compare their findings to a sample of the general population.…”

“…Similarly, Li et al [ 50 ] found that young people, who due to their age are already at higher risk of mental health problems, showed elevated mental health problems. University students, who generally display high rates of mental health problems and lower well-being [ 51 ], similarly demonstrated mental health problems immediately after the pandemic began [ 52 ].…”

A Bibliometric Review of Research on International Students’ Mental Health: Science Mapping of the Literature from 1957 to 2020

“…Originally, according to White and McCain [ 70 ], and later restated by Det Udomsap and Hallinger [ 71 ], the co-citation mapping technique not only intuitively showed the clusters but also addressed the quantity and influence of papers that acted as boundary-spanning units, expanding the literature and connecting the clusters within the literature. In line with previous opinions about the increasingly important role of the literature (e.g., see [ 101 , 102 ]), the analysis also showed that the topic of international students’ mental health has a high average number of citations per paper, and that there is a high interest in the topic across different scientific disciplines.…”

A Group-Facilitated, Internet-Based Intervention to Promote Mental Health and Well-Being in a Vulnerable Population of University Students: Randomized Controlled Trial of the Be Well Plan Program

“…One example of such a vulnerable population is university students, who have been found to experience significantly higher levels of psychological distress compared to their peers. There is a sizeable body of research [ 55 ] investigating the mental health of university students, demonstrating high rates of mental health problems [ 56 - 58 ]. University students are often going through a phase of transition, are financially vulnerable, or are removed from their support systems at home [ 59 ], which increases their risk of experiencing psychological distress.…”