Abstract
BackgroundThe frequency and severity of mental health problems in student populations have been a growing cause for concern worldwide, and studies have identified measures of a number of mental health symptoms that have been steadily increasing in frequency and intensity over the past 20–25 years.MethodsIn two studies we investigate the levels and domains of pathological worrying in university student participants. Study 1 is a retrospective study of Penn State Worry Questionnaire (PSWQ) data collected between 2001 and 2019. Study 2 describes the development of the Student Worry Questionnaire, a short and easily delivered measure of student worrying that identifies both frequency of worry as well as the student-relevant domains across which worrying occurs.ResultsStudy 1 revealed a steady increase in student worry scores of around 20% between 2001 and 2019, with a significant positive correlation between year of data collection and mean PSWQ score. The domain scores in Study 2 indicated that academic work was a significantly higher worry than any of the other domains, and worries about intimate relationships and ‘what people think of me’ were also worries that scored higher than either financial or health worries.ConclusionsThe present studies indicate that pathological worrying can be added to the list of anxiety- and stress-related symptoms that have been shown to be on the increase in student populations in recent decades, and we discuss whether these increases represent a greater willingness to report symptoms or a genuine increase in experienced symptoms over time.
Highlights
The frequency and severity of mental health problems in student populations have been a growing cause for concern worldwide, and studies have identified measures of a number of mental health symptoms that have been steadily increasing in frequency and intensity over the past 20–25 years
There was a significant positive correlation between year of data collection and Penn State Worry Questionnaire (PSWQ) score that remained significant even when controlling for Gender, PSWQ scores overall were significantly higher in females and there was evidence suggesting that the rate of increase in PSWQ scores across years may have been higher in females than males
This gender difference is consistent with evidence in the literature that worry frequency is generally higher in females than males (McCann et al, 1991; Robichaud et al, 2003; Stavosky & Borkovec, 1987). This gradual increase in student worry scores over the past two decades is consistent with other reports of increases in anxiety and stress-related symptoms in student populations (Carleton et al, 2019; Pereira et al, 2019) and young adults generally (Calling et al, 2017; Pitchforth et al, 2018), and this increasing trend in PSWQ scores has been reported in students in at least two other UK Higher Education institutions (Freeston, 2020; Morriss, 2020)
Summary
The frequency and severity of mental health problems in student populations have been a growing cause for concern worldwide, and studies have identified measures of a number of mental health symptoms that have been steadily increasing in frequency and intensity over the past 20–25 years. Methods In two studies we investigate the levels and domains of pathological worrying in university student participants. Study 2 describes the development of the Student Worry Questionnaire, a short and delivered measure of student worrying that identifies both frequency of worry as well as the student-relevant domains across which worrying occurs. Results Study 1 revealed a steady increase in student worry scores of around 20% between 2001 and 2019, with a significant positive correlation between year of data collection and mean PSWQ score. Conclusions The present studies indicate that pathological worrying can be added to the list of anxiety- and stress-related symptoms that have been shown to be on the increase in student populations in recent decades, and we discuss whether these increases represent a greater willingness to report symptoms or a genuine increase in experienced symptoms over time
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