College Mental Health Statistics

• One out of four young adults will experience a depressive episode by age 24.
  
  
• Nearly half of all college students report feeling so depressed at some point in time that they have trouble functioning.
  
  
• If left untreated depression can lead to suicide. Suicide is the third leading cause of death for those aged 15-24 and the second leading cause of death of college students.
  
  
• Many young people are coming to college with an existing diagnosis and treatment history. Some of those students might not have made it beyond high school in previous generations, but this means that more young people need access to comprehensive mental health care.
  
  
• According to a 2004 survey by the American College Health Association, nearly half of all college students report feeling so depressed at some point in time that they have trouble functioning, and 14.9 percent meet the criteria for clinical depression. This marks an increase of 4.6% in the number of students who reported having ever been diagnosed with depression over a four-year time span.
  
  Of the 14.9% of students who reported having ever been diagnosed with depression:
  - 35.8% said they had been diagnosed with depression in the last school year.
  - 25.2% said they are currently in therapy for depression.
  - 38% said they are currently taking medication for depression.
  
  Students reported during the last school year feeling the following:
  - Over 60% of the students reported feeling things were hopeless one or more times.
  - Almost 40% of the men and 50% of the women reported feeling so depressed that they had difficulty functioning one or more times.
  - 10% of the students reported seriously considering attempting suicide at least one time.
  
  
• The National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism report that unintentional fatal injuries related to alcohol use increased from about 1,500 in 1998 to more than 1,700 in 2001 among U.S. college students aged 18-24. Over the same period national surveys indicate the number of students who drove under the influence of alcohol increased by 500,000, from 2.3 million to 2.8 million.
  
  
• According to a 1997 national study conducted by the Harvard School of Public Health, nearly half of all college students surveyed drank four or five drinks in one sitting within the previous two weeks.
  
  Students who live in a fraternity or sorority house are the heaviest drinkers – 86 percent of fraternity residents and 80 percent of sorority residents report binge drinking.
  
  Thirty-nine percent of college women binge drank within a 2-week period compared with 50 percent of college men.
  
  
• Young people ages 18 to 25 have the highest prevalence of binge (38.7 percent) and heavy (13.6 percent) drinking, with a peak rate (48.2 percent for binge and 17.8 percent for heavy drinking) occurring at age 21, according to the 2001 National Household Survey on Drug Abuse.
  
  
• According to a recent study in the Archives of General Psychiatry, 18 percent of U.S. College students (1=24% of men, 13% of women) suffered from clinically significant alcohol-related problems, compared with 15% of their non-college attending peers (22% of men, 9% of women).