Graduate Student Mental Health: Needs Assessment and Utilization of Counseling Services

Journal of College Student Development, May/Jun 2006 by Hyun, Jenny K, Quinn, Brian C, Madon, Temina, Lustig, Steve

Financial Status. We assessed financial status by asking students which of the following statements best reflected their financial status at school: (a) I am not sure I will have enough funds to complete my studies, (b) I probably will have enough funds to complete my studies, and (c) I am confident that I will have sufficient funds to complete my studies. Responses were coded continuously based on increasing confidence in their financial situation.

Family Burden. The survey instrument assessed family burden by asking about the number of hours spent on household activities and childcare duties in a typical week over the last 12 months. Respondents reported spending a mean of 8.0 hours per week on household activities (SD = 9.1), which was significantly correlated with the number of children that graduate students had (r = 0.52, p

Academic Discipline. The survey instrument asked graduate students to select the school or college in which their program belonged. For smaller and interdisciplinary programs that may not have an institutional "home," this allowed students to choose the school to which they felt most institutionally tied. We grouped students in chemistry, engineering, natural resources, physical and biological sciences into the "science and engineering" discipline. We grouped students in the schools of business, journalism, optometry, law, environmental design, information management, and public health into the "professional" school discipline. Students in the social sciences, social welfare, education, and public policy schools were grouped in the "social sciences" discipline. Lastly, we grouped students in the humanities disciplines, such history, English, political science, into the "humanities" discipline.

Program Competitiveness. The survey asked respondents to rate the competitiveness among students in their respective programs on a 6-point scale where 1 indicated very uncompetitive and 6 indicated very competitive.

Social Support. Students responded to questions about the frequency of communication with their friends and family. Frequency of contact with friends and family was coded on a 0 to 5 scale, where 0 indicated no contact at all and 5 indicated contact at least once a day.

Race/Ethnicity and International Students. We grouped race/ethnicity into five categories (White, Asian/Pacific Islander, Hispanic, African-American, and Other) and included an additional category for international students. We compared self-identified international graduate students with domestic graduate students.

Utilization of Mental Health Services. The survey instrument collected utilization information through self-report. We asked students if they had ever used on-campus counseling services, off-campus counseling services, or both.

Data Analysis

The analysis in this paper is divided into three parts. The first part examines graduate students' self-reported need for mental health services, as well as the factors that influence the need for mental health services among graduate students. Particular attention is paid to the differences between male and female students. The analysis uses a logistic regression model with the dichotomous dependent variable whether the student had or had not experienced an emotional or stress-related problem that significantly affected his or her well-being and academic performance. Independent variables include those identified through previous studies, such as gender (Druss et al., 2000; Malinckrodt & Leong, 1992; McLaughlin, 1985; Silverman, Meyer, Sloane, Raffel, & Pratt, 1997; Toews et al., 1997), ethnicity (HHS, 2001), international student status (Aubrey, 1991), financial confidence (Furr et al., 2001; Nogueira-Martins et al., 2004; Toews et al.; Westefeld & Furr, 1987), academic disciplines (Nogueira-Martins et al.; Toews et al.), social support (Malinckrodt & Leong; O'Neil et al., 1984), and family burden (Suitor et al., 2001), plus variables measuring competitiveness within programs (Toews et al.), functional relationships with academic advisors (Schlosser, Knox, Moskovitz, & Hill, 2003), and the interaction of advisor relationship in graduate students who reported having an emotional or stress-related event in the previous year.