Engineering Student Mental Health and Help Seeking: Analysis of National Data from the Healthy Minds Study

Higher education is experiencing what some have called a mental health crisis, with significant increases in the prevalence of mental health concerns such as anxiety, depression and suicidal ideation. Within engineering, it has been hypothesized that the 'culture of stress' could result in negative mental health impacts. However, published data does not paint a clear picture on the prevalence of diagnosable mental health in engineering students when compared to students from outside engineering. Further, few studies have looked at how identity factors such as gender might impact the interpretation of these results across engineering and non-engineering student populations. Therefore, this study used publicly available data from the 2019-2020 Healthy Minds Study to understand how self-reported mental health distress and professional help seeking differs between engineering and non-engineering student populations. Importantly, we focus on the impact of gender identity on the interpretation of these results. The Healthy Minds Study is an annual survey conducted at universities across the United States that examines mental health related factors for undergraduate and graduate students. The dataset used in this study contained responses from over 56,000 students, with 7,000 students from engineering majors and 46,000 students from non-engineering majors. The non-engineering student population was 25% male and 73% female. The engineering student population was 61% male and 37% female. Due to the small sample sizes of gender expansive students (< 2% for each population), only analyses for male and female gender identities are presented. Depression and anxiety were measured through the Patient Health Questionnaire 9-item instrument (PHQ-9) and Generalized Anxiety Disorder 7-item instrument (GAD-7) respectively. When comparing across all engineering and non-engineering students, engineering students reported symptoms associated with lower levels of both depression (p < 0.001) and anxiety (p < 0.001). However, when controlling for gender, the significance of the difference was reduced in women (p=0.020) and eliminated in men (p=0.317). Rates of anxiety remained lower for engineering students in both men and women, though the differences were somewhat reduced. For students that self-reported symptoms of a diagnosable mental health concern, differences in professional help seeking within the past 12-months were identified. Distressed engineering students were significantly less likely to have received professional help (p < 0.001), with 9% fewer engineering students seeking professional help compared to their non-engineering peers. When accounting for the impact of gender identity on interpretation of these results, the trends persist but are less significant in the female student population (p=0.024) compared to the male student population (p < 0.001). While 9% fewer male engineering students had sought help compared to their non-engineering peers, there was only a 3% difference for female students. Results from this study identify important differences in mental health measures across engineering and non-engineering student populations, and highlight the importance of accounting for the impact of identity factors on the interpretation of these results.