(190a) Engineering Student Mental Health – Analysis of National Data from the Healthy Minds Study

Data from national studies indicate an increasing prevalence of mental health problems among college students. For instance, the frequency of depression increased from 24.8% in 2009 to 29.9% in 2017, while the percentage of students reporting suicidal ideation increased from 5.8% in 2007 to 10.8% in 2017 (Lipson, Lattie, and Eisenberg 2018). Similar increases were seen for anxiety from 22% in 2014 (Eisenberg et al. 2014) to 31% in 2019 (Eisenberg et al. 2019). While the problem is not unique to engineering students, engineering faculty have become increasingly motivated to better understand factors influencing the mental health of their students. In this study, publicly available data from the 2018-2019 Healthy Minds Study were analyzed to better understand how factors related to mental health differ between the engineering undergraduate population (n ~ 4,000) and the general undergraduate population (n ~ 60,000). From these data, 32% of engineering students were scored as having moderate to severe depression, as compared to 37% of the general student population. That being said, only 32% of undergraduate engineers with significant anxiety or depression symptoms had sought professional help in the last year, compared to 45% of their non-engineering peers, indicating a significant mental health treatment gap in engineering students. Factors that could influence student mental health or help-seeking behavior were also analyzed. For instance, engineering students spent more time in class, with 44% indicating more than 16 hours per week in class vs. 32% of non-engineering students. Similarly, 37% of engineering students indicated that they spent more than 16 hours per week on homework vs. 27% of non-engineering students. Data from this study could guide the design of research studies to identify targets for improving the mental health of engineering undergraduate students.