Aspects of campus climate and mental health threats: The role of hypervigilance

Abstract

Objective: This study sought to examine if hypervigilance is one mechanism through which aspects of less supportive campus climates are associated with mental health symptoms for college students. Participants: Data from 386 undergraduate college students attending a small college in the northeastern United States were collected. Methods: Participants completed online surveys which employed established measures of study variables. Results: Hypervigilance mediated the association between subjective social status and symptoms of anxiety and depression; lower subjective social status was associated with greater hypervigilance and greater hypervigilance was associated with more symptoms of anxiety and depression. Less sense of community was also directly associated with more anxiety, depression, and somatic symptoms. Conclusions: Hypervigilance may be an adaptive strategy to protect against psychosocial harm for low status members of the campus community, but may damage longer-term mental health. Implications for higher education administrators are discussed.

Keywords:

• College diversity climate
• hypervigilance
• mental health
• sense of community
• subjective social status

Conflict of interest disclosure

The authors have no conflicts of interest to disclose.

Additional information

Funding

This study was funded by a Pennsylvania Consortium for the Liberal Arts Arthur Vining Davis Teaching and Learning award. The funding source had no role in the study design, data collection and analyses, or submission process.