Anxiety, mental illness, learning disabilities, and learning accommodation use: A cross-sectional study.

Area of Science:

• Nursing Education
• Student Mental Health
• Academic Psychology

Background:

• Effective nurse education necessitates understanding student attributes to meet learning needs.
• Identifying student challenges is crucial for academic success and support.

Purpose of the Study:

• To determine the prevalence of medically diagnosed anxiety, mental illnesses (MI), and learning disabilities (LD) among nursing students.
• To assess the utilization of learning accommodations (LA) by nursing students.
• To compare nursing students' study and test-taking anxiety to a normative sample.

Main Methods:

• Secondary analysis of quantitative cross-sectional data using the Academic Success Inventory for College Students (ASICS).
• Surveys administered to first-year students early in the program and to all students (years 1-4) at the end of academic terms.

Main Results:

• At program start, 21% had anxiety, 16% MI, 2% LD, and 6% used LA; by fourth year, these rose to 23%, 22%, 8%, and 13% respectively.
• Respondents showed significantly higher test-taking anxiety compared to the ASICS normative sample, with large effect sizes across all categories (Anxiety h=0.884; MI h=0.601; LD h=2.094; LA h=0.725).

Conclusions:

• A significant proportion of nursing students report mental health conditions and learning disabilities, with increasing accommodation use throughout their program.
• Elevated test-taking anxiety among nursing students requires targeted interventions.
• Recommendations include early identification, tailored support, faculty development, and adaptive pedagogical approaches.