An analysis of the mental health trajectories of university students compared to their community peers using a national longitudinal survey

ABSTRACT

This study examines the mental health trajectories of future/current undergraduate university students relative to their age-matched community peers from the ages of 15 to 21. It analysed data from the Household, Income and Labour Dynamics in Australia survey. The sample comprised 442 students and 1292 peers. Mental health was assessed with the five-item Mental Health Inventory from the Short Form 36. The results showed that students generally had better mental health than their peers. This was largely associated with better parental mental health and socio-economic position. However, the models also revealed reductions in the mental health of students relative to their peers at ages prior to major transitions in their student careers. This study contributes to the literature on university student mental health by comparing the mental health trajectories of students with their community peers and by identifying the ages when student mental health programmes may be of most benefit.

KEYWORDS:

• Mental health
• university students
• youth
• socio-economic position
• longitudinal structural equation modelling

Acknowledgements

This paper uses unit record data from the Household, Income and Labour Dynamics in Australia (HILDA) Survey. The HILDA Project was initiated and is funded by the Australian Government Department of Social Services (DSS) and is managed by the Melbourne Institute of Applied Economic and Social Research (Melbourne Institute). The findings and views reported in this paper, however, are those of the authors and should not be attributed to either DSS or the Melbourne Institute.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Ethical standards

This paper reports results based on the analysis of de-identified secondary data. Approval to access and analyse the HILDA data was obtained from the DSS.

ORCID

Stefan Cvetkovski http://orcid.org/0000-0003-1699-9819

Anthony F. Jorm http://orcid.org/0000-0002-1424-4116

Notes

1 The Australian higher education system comprises 130 providers, with the vast majority of undergraduate students (93%) attending 38 major universities (37 are public universities and the other is the Australian Catholic University) (Dockery, Seymour, and Koshy 2016). There are also 3 small private universities and a further 89 smaller providers (see Dockery, Seymour, and Koshy 2016, for further details). Australia was the first country to introduce income contingent loans (ICLs) for university fees in 1989 with the Higher Education Contribution Scheme (HECS) (see, e.g. Chapman and Greenaway 2006). Through this scheme, students do not pay ‘up-front’ fees, but have them deferred until they are employed. Only when their incomes are above a threshold do students begin to pay back their loans through the taxation system. The policy motivation for the HECS was twofold: (1) to allow for the expansion of the higher education system, and (2) to ensure equity of access. Since the introduction of the HECS in Australia, other countries have adopted ICLs for university fees (e.g. New Zealand, South Africa and the UK) (Chapman and Greenaway 2006).

2 For peer-specific changes between adjacent ages, there was a small, statistically significant reduction in mental health only from age 15 to 16 in the unadjusted model (b = −0.15 (95%CI: −0.30_, −0.00), p < .05; d = −0.08). There were no statistically significant changes in mental health between adjacent ages in any of the models with covariates.

Additional information

Funding

This research was funded by an Australian National Health and Medical Research Council (NHMRC) postgraduate scholarship [under grant 1074750] to Cvetkovski and an NHMRC Fellowship [under grant 1059785] to Jorm.