Mental health issues have become increasingly normalized over the last few years, but they are still not understood to be the same as physical health issues by all people. This is particularly true for racial and ethnic minorities, whose health issues are often overlooked. One study examined this topic among college students in the United States (Chen et al., 2019). This article will briefly present the methods and results of this study.
Methods
The data used were from the Spring 2015 version of ACHA-NCHA IIB, which surveyed 93,034 students from 108 colleges and universities in the United States. This study ultimately used data from 67,308 students. Respondents were asked about the following:
- Mental illness symptoms as assessed by 11 questions about feelings and behaviors related to mental health in the 12 months prior
- Psychiatric diagnoses made by professionals in the 12 months prior:
- Anorexia
- Anxiety
- Attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder
- Bipolar disorder
- Bulimia
- Depression
- Insomnia
- Other sleep disorders
- Obsessive-compulsive disorder
- Panic attacks
- Phobia
- Schizophrenia
- Substance abuse or addiction
- Other addiction
- Other mental health conditions
- Sociodemographic characteristics:
- Age
- Gender
- Sexual orientation
- Institution type
- Year in school
- Transfer student status
- International student status
- Race-ethnicity
Results
The following results were obtained:
- Hispanic, Black, and Asian/Pacific Islander students were less likely to report psychiatric diagnoses in the past year than white students
- Hispanic, Black, and Asian/Pacific Islander students reported fewer mental illness symptoms than white students
- However, Asian/Pacific Islander students were more likely to experience having felt hopeless, so depressed that it was difficult to function, and being overwhelmed by anger than white students
- Hispanic and Black students reported fewer psychiatric diagnoses than white students, but reported the same amount of suicide attempts or more in the past year
- Multiracial students reported similar or lower rates of psychiatric diagnoses compared to white students
- However, multiracial students were more likely to report experiencing hopelessness, exhaustion, loneliness, depression to the point of having difficulty functioning, and being overwhelmed by anxiety and anger than white students
- Multiracial students also reported higher potential of self-injury as well as suicidal thoughts and attempts than white students
- The sample size of American Indian/Native Alaskan/Native Hawaiian students was too small to show any statistically significant differences
Wrapping up
Hispanic, Black, and Asian/Pacific Islander students all reported lower rates of psychiatric diagnoses than white students. However, they also reported similar or even higher rates of mental illness symptoms and intentions to self-harm than white students. This suggests that while all students experience similar rates of mental health issues, non-white students are diagnosed with mental health issues substantially less often than white students. This suggests that there is work to be done regarding the diagnoses of mental health issues in college and university students who are racial/ethnic minorities, as well as multiracial students.
References
Chen, J.A., Stevens, C., Wong, S.H.M., Liu, C.H. (2019). Psychiatric Symptoms and Diagnoses Among U.S. College Students: A Comparison by Race and Ethnicity. Psychiatric Services, 70(6), 442, 449. doi: 10.1176/appi.ps.201800388.
