The importance of physical and mental health in explaining health-related academic role impairment among college students

Publication date: Available online 29 January 2020Source: Journal of Psychiatric ResearchAuthor(s): Chelsey R. Wilks, Randy P. Auerbach, Jordi Alonso, Corina Benjet, Ronny Bruffaerts, Pim Cuijpers, David D. Ebert, Jennifer G. Green, Claude A. Mellins, Philippe Mortier, Ekaterina Sadikova, Nancy A. Sampson, Ronald C. KesslerAbstractResearch consistently documents high rates of mental health problems among college students and strong associations of these problems with academic role impairment. Less is known, though, about prevalence and effects of physical health problems in relation to mental health problems. The current report investigates this by examining associations of summary physical and mental health scores from the widely-used Short-Form 12 (SF-12) Health Survey with self-reported academic role functioning in a self-report survey of 3,855 first-year students from five universities in the northeastern United States (US; mean age 18.5; 53.0% female). The mean SF-12 physical component summary (PCS) score (55.1) was half a standard deviation above the benchmark US adult population mean. The mean SF-12 mental component summary (MCS) score (38.2) was more than a full standard deviation below the US adult population mean. Two-thirds of students (67.1%) reported at least mild and 10.5% severe health-related academic role impairment on a modified version of the Sheehan Disability Scale. Both PCS and MCS scores were significantly and inversely related to these impairment score...
Source: Journal of Psychiatric Research - Category: Psychiatry Source Type: research