College students’ PTSD levels on rise

Health in a Heartbeat

College has always been a stressful time for some students, and mental health conditions have been on the rise at many campuses.

But researchers said they had no idea it was this bad.

Post-traumatic stress disorder, or PTSD [P-T-S-D], diagnoses among college students more than doubled between 2017 and 2022, rising most sharply as the COVID-19 pandemic closed campuses and changed life as we knew it.

PTSD rose from 3.4% among college students to 7.5%. Researchers, typically very careful to avoid sensationalized headlines about their work, called the increase “shocking.”

The team analyzed survey responses from nearly 400,000 participants in the annual online Healthy Minds Study.

PTSD is characterized by intrusive memories, avoidance, negative changes in thinking and mood and changes in physical and emotional reactions. It can include “flashbacks” to traumatic episodes. It is diagnosed when symptoms last more than a month.

Researchers said some of the increased stress clearly stemmed from the pandemic, when campuses and cities locked down while health officials worked to stop COVID-19’s spread and learned how to treat the illness. But they noted that other stressors affect college students, too, like campus shootings, global tensions and polarized politics.

An estimated 5% of adults in the U.S. experience PTSD in any given year. Over their lifetimes, 8% of women and 4% of men will face the condition.

The takeaway? PTSD treatment is needed on college campuses. Fortunately, short-term treatments created for veterans, like exposure therapy and cognitive processing therapy, are effective at managing symptoms.