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Student mental health concerns and demand for mental health services have both grown—is this a crisis, and what does that mean for colleges and universities?
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Over the past decade, student mental health has grown as a retention concern for higher education leaders as young people nationally report higher rates of anxiety, depression, loneliness and suicidal ideation.
Recent data from Inside Higher Ed’s 2024 Student Voice survey of 5,025 undergraduates, conducted by Generation Lab in May, found two in five students say their mental health is impacting their ability to focus, learn and perform academically “a great deal,” and one in 10 students rate their mental health as “poor.”
While states and institutions have invested unprecedented dollars and resources into improving student wellness, identifying the source of college students’ declining mental wellness rates is a challenge for administrators and learners alike.
Inside Higher Ed asked students and college presidents what factors are driving an increased demand for mental health services on college campuses, and the results from the two surveys highlight generational differences in language around mental health, the power of online spaces and the need for a communitywide focus on wellness.
Methodology
Inside Higher Ed’s annual Student Voice survey was fielded in May in partnership with Generation Lab and had 5,025 total student respondents.
The sample includes over 3,500 four-year students and 1,400 two-year students. Over one-third of respondents are post-traditional (attending a two-year institution or 25 or older in age), 16 percent are exclusively online learners, and 40 percent are first-generation students. Over half (52 percent) of respondents are white, 15 percent are Hispanic, 14 percent are Asian American or Pacific Islanders, 11 percent are Black, and 8 percent are another race (international student or two or more races).
The complete data set, with interactive visualizations, is available here. In addition to questions about health and wellness, the survey asked students about their academics, college experience and preparation for life after college.
Survey says: When asked what factors are the biggest drivers of the “college mental health crisis” or high demand for student mental health services in recent years, 42 percent of Student Voice respondents said the need to balance personal, economic and family duties with schoolwork. (This was also the No. 1 stressor students reported in the survey).
Other top drivers, as reported by students, include increased academic stress (37 percent), prevalence of social media (33 percent) and an increase in loneliness (29 percent). Around one-quarter of respondents believe current economic events and generational differences in how students cope with stress are significant factors in the student mental health crisis.
College presidents, on the other hand, pointed to generational changes in the student experience. Inside Higher Ed’s 2024 Presidents Survey found 86 percent of college leaders (n=362) believe social media is very or extremely influential in the demand for mental health services, followed by decreased socialization skills caused by COVID-19 (74 percent), loneliness (68 percent), pre-existing mental health conditions (62 percent), declining student resilience (62 percent) and the need to balance personal, economic and family duties with schoolwork (59 percent). Only 42 percent of presidents thought academic stress was highly influential.
Mental health experts say these results aren’t entirely off base, with changing demographics of learners in higher education and a growing consciousness of larger societal issues.
“If you ask administrators like me, we’re used to the traditional, normal college student development issues, which is what the college students are saying is what’s hard,” explains James Raper, vice president for health, well-being, access and prevention at Emory University. “‘How do I learn to be a more full human and take all those responsibilities on and be at a university and figure out how to hold that down?’”
At the same time, college leaders should understand that the nature of being a young adult has changed, which impacts students’ mental health.
“Young people are dealing with a completely different world than we were when we were younger,” says Laura Erickson-Schroth, chief medical officer at the Jed Foundation. “Some of the same stressors exist, of course—there are always going to be things going on in your family or with relationships. But young people are thinking about a lot of things that didn’t exist.”
Some of those worries are external, such as climate change, racial justice, reproductive rights, campus protests and anti-LGBTQ+ legislation. Others are more personal, such as a global rise in loneliness among young people and teens spending less time in person with their friends outside of school.
What’s in a crisis? A 2022 survey by TimelyCare (formerly TimelyMD) found 88 percent of college students believe there is a mental health crisis on college campuses.
Doug Everhart, director of student wellness and health promotion at the University of California, Irvine, pushes back against the idea of a crisis, because “language is what helps perpetuate this whole issue,” he says. “We keep saying ‘mental health crisis,’ and we perpetuate that thought by continuing to label it that way.”
For better or for worse, language around mental health has changed as health care professionals and other advocates have worked to address the stigma of mental illness.
“Part of this mental health crisis that we’re all talking about on campus is a definitional one,” says Melissa Saunders, assistant director for clinical services at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. “Because the term ‘mental health,’ which used to refer to traditional mental illness, like a mood disorder or something significant, has now been used much more broadly, to refer to mental and emotional discomfort that comes from the ordinary stressors of life.”
As language around mental health evolves to be more inclusive and widespread, young people are more comfortable talking about mental health. Active Minds is one example of this work, bringing together student advocates on campuses across the country to discuss mental health and provide peer support.
“We are an organization that is led by young people, so if young people are telling us that they’re in a mental health crisis, we believe them first and foremost,” says Trace Terrell, higher education and policy intern for Active Minds. “If that’s their experience, then we’re going to address their experience directly.”
May data from JED found, among 13- to 17-year-olds, stigma is not a top concern in seeking mental health care. Among Student Voice respondents, 16 percent say the destigmatization of seeking mental health services is one of the drivers of increased demand for support.
Data on students with disabilities finds there is a greater number of students receiving accommodations for mental and emotional disabilities. A May report from the U.S. Government Accountability Office found the number of postsecondary students with depression increased 226 percent from 2004 to 2020. A 2022 U.S. Department of Health and Human Services study found the number of children (ages 3 to 17) diagnosed with anxiety and depression grew by around 29 percent and 27 percent, respectively.
Only 12 percent of Student Voice participants say “more pre-existing health conditions” is one of the biggest drivers of the college mental health crisis. Fifteen percent point to a rise in self-diagnoses.
The role of social media: One in three Student Voice respondents believe social media has played a role in the rise of the college student mental health crisis, compared to 86 percent of presidents.
On the plus side, social media can be a space for students to connect with one another, find support and learn more about their interests or world events. It’s also an accepted norm in today’s culture.
“We all use social media all the time,” Erickson-Schroth says. “It’s the water we swim in at this point. We live our lives online in so many ways.”
Raper believes the challenges with students and social media go deeper than scrolling Instagram or Facebook.
“Forget the function of social media itself on a phone, but the presence of constant information in our brains, on developing brains, makes it harder,” Raper says. “Whether you’re exposed to that first when you’re 8 [years old] or 30, it makes it harder to do the normal life things.”
Electronic stimuli can make it challenging to engage in healthy mental practices, such as mindfulness and contemplative practices. Teaching those skills is a priority for Raper and his team, he says. “They need to catch up—that’s been harder for them, that ability to be bored.”
In normalizing mental health concerns, social media has been both a tool and a detriment, with more learners aware of what mental illness could look like but also more likely to self-determine they have a disorder based on what they see online.
“We have seen a tendency in the last five years or so for students to self-diagnose based on what they’re seeing on TikTok, particularly, but other social medias,” Saunders says. “There’s almost a disorder of the year on TikTok. A couple of years ago, it was autism, and then it was OCD. [Students are] getting a lot of information online, and then matching what they’re feeling at the moment with what they think is a major mental illness, when in fact it’s not.”
Terrell, an undergraduate student at Johns Hopkins, has experienced this firsthand, supporting friends as they struggle with symptoms of poor mental health.
“People can experience anxiety, but having an anxiety disorder is completely different. People can feel sad for long periods of time, but that doesn’t necessarily qualify as depression,” he explains. “It’s really important for us to teach young people how to get it right when they’re talking about it and how to accurately express their emotions.”
A culture of care: Experts agree getting ahead of the mental health crisis takes a community effort, catered to the institution and its students.
“We don’t want to engage just the individual well-being issue,” Raper from Emory says. “It’s not just ‘Go to counseling.’ We have to create a community that supports this.”
JED is seeing “unprecedented numbers” of college campuses reaching out to the organization, looking to make mental health and suicide prevention a priority. “They’re excited to think about this on a large scale in ways that they weren’t before,” Erickson-Schroth says.
The presidents’ survey found 57 percent of leaders agree somewhat or strongly that their institution has enough clinical capacity to meet the mental health needs of their undergraduate population. Seven in 10 respondents also indicate they have invested in wellness facilities or services to promote overall well-being on campus since 2020.
Emory will roll out a new well-being framework in the fall, helping students practice and reflect on eight dimensions of wellness while involving the entire campus community.
UC Irvine is piloting an initiative this fall, as well. It encourages social development of students by creating informal conversation spaces for students, faculty and staff members to engage and bond over shared interests and hobbies.
“Our hypothesis is that it’s going to improve communication, improve relationships and take down these barriers for connection and engagement that currently prevent them from doing [wellness and self-care],” Everhart says.
Active Minds is also working to start conversations with students in middle school, getting ahead of student crises by empowering them with education and programming.
Read more about institutional interventions to support student mental health here.
