Mental Health of College Students

AbstractMental health is a social topic that is becoming more of an essential aspect of the quality of life for individuals, especially in the young adult population globally. During the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, depression rates quickly increased, especially in the adolescent and young adult populations causing opportunities in order to socialize and utilize recreation to decrease. This caused the means to seek treatment to be unavailable or unaffordable. Over a 10-year time period, the rate of treatment for mental health issues for college students in the United States increased by 15%, and those that experienced a chronic diagnosis increased by 14%. Even though the stigma of mental health, especially depression has declined in society, the prevalence of the disorder continued to rise, even though the drop in quality of life was acknowledged (Lipson et al., 2019). This analysis attempts to measure if there is a statistical relationship between university students’ education status and their mental health status, specifically depression and anxiety. The dataset was conducted on college students through a Google survey of an unidentified university and analyzed through SPSS. The dataset was collected from a random population within the school population that was invited to take the survey. The hypothesis is that there is a positive correlation between decreased GPA status and increased prevalence of depression and that an increased GPA status is related to a higher prevalence of anxiety. The independent variable used is reported GPA and the dependent variables are the reported depression and anxiety statuses. Secondary variables of registered degree and reported treatment outsourced were also considered. These variables lead to the research questions “Does a lower GPA indicate an increased chance of experiencing depression", as well as "does a higher GPA indicate a higher chance of experiencing anxiety in university students?”