Survey finds mental health issues increase among students in second year of university

By Liv Slomka

Students’ mental health worsens during their second year of studies at university, a small study has revealed, when they say they find the pressure and the workload increases.

In a small anonymous study aimed at past and present university students, we found that student mental health is mostly affected by loneliness.

Based on my recent anonymous survey, students’ mental health has been getting worse in their second year at university. In this survey, we had 16 participants, with 9 of them rating their mental health as poor and 5 as fair. Only 2 students felt like their mental health was good during their second year of studies.

One of our anonymous participants said: “My student loan went down a lot since last year and I swapped jobs 3 times since July which is adding a lot of pressure on me.

“I can’t go out because I’m constantly trying to save money before my next temporary contract at work runs out. All I do is work, look for a permanent job or do university work and it’s just a lot.”

Eleven out of 16 participants said that they have pre-existing mental health problems before starting university and only 4 are receiving help for these.

Students are also known for going out and partying during their time at university. We also asked our participants if they think students are using substance abuse like alcohol to deal with their mental health getting worse.

Here are the results:

Six strongly agreed with the statement and another 6 agreed. Students are trying to find ways to deal with their mental health alone which can lead to substance abuse, this shows that students need more support when dealing with bad mental health.

Another participant said: “ I think that understanding people may be stressed is important and if they are stressed, let them have extra time and give people more money to live on as people may need money to survive as well as have a social life.”

Based on these results from the anonymous survey, we need to think about what we can introduce to help students get through university without affecting their mental health as much and helping them when needed. We all feel pressure at university but how can we take a little bit of it away?