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Mental health in higher education students and non-students: evidence from a nationally representative panel study

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A Correction to this article was published on 24 May 2021

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Abstract

Despite increasing policy focus on mental health provision for higher education students, it is unclear whether they have worse mental health outcomes than their non-student peers. In a nationally-representative UK study spanning 2010–2019 (N = 11,519), 17–24 year olds who attended higher education had lower average psychological distress (GHQ score difference =  − 0.37, 95% CI − 0.60, − 0.08) and lower odds of case-level distress than those who did not (OR = 0.91, 95% CI 0.81, 1.02). Increases in distress between 2010 and 2019 were similar in both groups. Accessible mental health support outside higher education settings is necessary to prevent further widening of socioeconomic inequalities in mental health.

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Acknowledgements

Understanding Society is an initiative funded by the Economic and Social Research Council and various Government Departments, with scientific leadership by the Institute for Social and Economic Research, University of Essex, and survey delivery by NatCen Social Research and Kantar Public. The research data are distributed by the UK Data Service.

Funding

ET is funded by the ESRC-BBSRC Soc-B Centre for Doctoral Training (ES/P000347/1). Understanding Society is funded by the Economic and Social Research Council (ES/N00812X/1).

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Author notes

  1. Praveetha Patalay and David Bann contributed equally.

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Institute of Social Research, University College London, London, UK

    Evangeline Tabor, Praveetha Patalay & David Bann

  2. Faculty of Population Health Sciences, University College London, London, UK

    Praveetha Patalay

Authors
  1. Evangeline Tabor
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  2. Praveetha Patalay
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  3. David Bann
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Contributions

ET conducted all the analysis and led on drafting the manuscript. DB and PP conceptualised the study and supervised data analysis, interpretation and drafting of the manuscript. All authors approve the final version and consented to its publication.

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Evangeline Tabor.

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Conflicts of interest

On behalf of all authors, the corresponding author states that there is no conflict of interest.

Ethics Approval

The University of Essex Ethics Committee has approved all data collection conducted as part of the UKHLS main survey. The authors assert that all procedures contributing to this work comply with the ethical standards of the relevant national and institutional committees on human experimentation and with the Helsinki Declaration of 1975, as revised in 2008.

Availability of data and material

The UKHLS data are available to all researchers, free of cost from the UK Data Service (https://www.ukdataservice.ac.uk).

Additional information

The original online version of this article was revised due to a retrospective Open Access cancellation.

Supplementary Information

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Tabor, E., Patalay, P. & Bann, D. Mental health in higher education students and non-students: evidence from a nationally representative panel study. Soc Psychiatry Psychiatr Epidemiol 56, 879–882 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00127-021-02032-w

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00127-021-02032-w

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