College Student Mental Health Is Stable Across College Career, but Declining Over Time

The effect of time in college on student mental health is not as well-explored as cohort effects. The present study used 7 years of longitudinal mental health data to disentangle the effect of time in college from broader cohort-based effects.

8585 emerging adult students from two US colleges (mean age 19.58 ± 1.44, 54.16% women, 39.02% men, 6.81% trans or gender diverse) completed annual self-report survey instruments across the years 2018-2024. Individual participants provided between two and four time points of data. Participants completed questionnaire measures of depression, anxiety, and loneliness as well as demographic information. Linear mixed models were used to test hypotheses of change over time.

Cohort effects indicating a rise in depression and anxiety among more recent birth cohorts were found, whereas depression and anxiety were not found to change significantly over the course of a college career. A decrease in loneliness was found over one's college career. Race, gender, sexual orientation, and socioeconomic status each affected starting points, but not rates of change, of key constructs.

Each subsequent cohort of college students matriculates with higher rates of depression and anxiety. Despite the efforts of colleges to improve mental health, we found mental health conditions to be relatively stable over a college career. Colleges should evaluate their approach to student mental health to better account for these cohort effects and the enduring nature of mental health burden for their students.