Tuesday 16 August 2022 11:01 PM Rates of depression among college students jumped 135% from 2013 to 2021 trends now

Tuesday 16 August 2022 11:01 PM Rates of depression among college students jumped 135% from 2013 to 2021 trends now
Tuesday 16 August 2022 11:01 PM Rates of depression among college students jumped 135% from 2013 to 2021 trends now

Tuesday 16 August 2022 11:01 PM Rates of depression among college students jumped 135% from 2013 to 2021 trends now

The number of college students experiencing depression or anxiety has more than doubled over the last eight years, a new study finds.

Researchers at Boston University (BU) found that the number of students suffering from depression jumped 135 percent from 2013 to 2021. This came alongside a 110 percent increase in anxiety cases across the same time period.

While lockdowns, school closures and disruptions to everyday life caused by the COVID-19 pandemic are partly to blame for rises in recent years, experts warn the issues run much deeper. They also not that the years a person is in college are also coincidentally the years where a person is most likely to develop life-lasting mental health problems.

The mental health of Americans suffered as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic, especially among school-aged children. Some experts fear that the recent uptick in depression and anxiety among younger people - combined with a shortage of therapists - could lead to issue in the coming years.

The prevalence of both anxiety and depression among college students from 2013 to 2021 more than doubled - and figures had been steadily increasing for sometime before the COVID-19 pandemic

The prevalence of both anxiety and depression among college students from 2013 to 2021 more than doubled - and figures had been steadily increasing for sometime before the COVID-19 pandemic

'College is a key developmental time; the age of onset for lifetime mental health problems also directly coincides with traditional college years—75 percent of lifetime mental health problems will onset by age 24,' Dr Sarah Lipson, an assistant professor at BU said in a statement.

Researchers, who published their findings in the Journal of Affective Disorders, used data from 350,000 students across 300 schools in the U.S. using data gathered by the Healthy Minds Network - a massive project that gathers data on youth and adolescent mental health to be used in these types of studies.

The survey had gathered data on how a student felt day-to-day, whether they felt like they were undergoing positive personal development and if they had made an effort to seek out mental health care of some kind.

Researchers found slight upticks in overall mental health issues each year, even before the COVID-19 pandemic.

This indicates that while Covid likely did play a role in hurting many students' mental health - it alone can not be blamed for what has erupted as a worrying trend. 

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