When do College Students Seek Mental Health Services?

As mental health problems have become more prevalent among college students, mental health services utilization needs to improve.

This study aims to explore in what state of mental health problems students start to seek professional help by registering for a mental health service and explore the types of problems that trigger their help-seeking behavior.

This study is a cross-sectional study. A total of 801 students registered as clients at the college's mental health service (649 women and 152 men) filled out the Beck Depression Inventory (BDI-II) questionnaire to measure students’ levels of depression. The severity of mental health symptoms was assessed from their level of depression. Data were analyzed using descriptive statistics, t-tests, and ANOVA tests.

The findings demonstrated that most college students registering at the mental health service had moderate (31.2%) and severe (32.5%) levels of depression symptoms. The most common causes of their problems were emotional (35.8%), followed by academic (12.4%), negative thinking (11.2%), and relationship problems (10.4%). No differences were found in severity level between the male and female students [t(799)=0.841, p=0.4].

This study reports that college students tend to delay seeking psychological help through mental health services until they have moderate to severe mental health symptoms.