University students increasingly seeking mental health support from Dorset Mind
Around the UK, one in six undergraduates experienced mental health challenges in 2022
Dorset Mind has seen an increase in the number of university students experiencing problems with their mental health.
It has been reported that this figure has almost tripled at universities across the UK since 2016/17 academic year.
There has been a significant increase in poor mental health over the last 12 months, a period during which the cost-of-living crisis intensified.
Between 2022 and 2023, students citing ‘financial distress’ as the main reason they would consider dropping out went up from 3.5% to 8%.
A spokesperson for Dorset Mind, Dee Swinton said: “The impact rising rents has on their maintenance loans and their financing is huge, so we get students struggling with the workload at university and just surviving.
“Some students are having to get a job or even two jobs in some cases and that's massive pressure on someone in full time education.”
Analysis by King's College London found undergraduates who attended state schools have on average worse mental health than their peers who attended private school.
Additionally, students who get most of their money through a maintenance loan or paid work are more likely to have mental health difficulties than those on scholarships or with family support.
“It's quite hard for young people at the moment,” Dee Swinton said: “There’s a climate crisis, uncertainty about work in the future, housing and will they ever be able to afford it, the stress of paying a lot of money for a course, it feels like there's quite a bleak future for students at the moment.”
While Covid and the cost-of-living crisis have clearly exacerbated such challenges, the upward trend is not new.
Dee Swinton told us: “When you move to a new area, you leave your support network behind and that can be a big problem for young people. They could be feeling homesick, they haven't got their friends or family around them, and they don't know people well enough to talk to them about how they feel.”
Poor mental health is “by far” the most common reason for students wanting to drop out of university.
In data comprised of more than 80,000 students, female students were more than twice as likely as male students to say they have been affected by poor mental health.