It is well-known that not only biological but also psychosocial factors, such as negative life events, are associated with the onset of mental illness, including depressive disorders and anxiety disorders.1, 2 University students are in the transition from adolescence to adulthood. They have experienced various life events in the past and are now experiencing new ones. We aimed to investigate the association of the experience of the negative life events with the risk of mental illness among Japanese university students as this is important to understand in the field of university mental health. Based on previous studies,3, 4 we prepared a questionnaire to investigate the factors that might negatively affect the mental health of university students. The questionnaire comprised questions on whether the respondents have experienced negative life events. The participants were asked to select “yes” or “no” as their answers. Additionally, the items in the Kessler psychological distress scale 10 (K10)5 were added to evaluate the participants' mental health status. K10 consists of 10 items that are answered by a five-point scale ranging from “never (=0) to “always” (=4), providing a total score between 0 and 40. The total score is used as a mental illness indicator, with a cut-off score of K10 of 14/15. A score of 15 or higher indicates a high possibility of severe mental illness.6 The survey was conducted at three national universities in the academic year 2019–2021. The study was approved by the ethics committee of Ibaraki University (N. 180200). Informed consent was obtained from the study participants. Binary logistic regression analysis was conducted to evaluate the relationship between the risk of mental illness (high or low risk) and negative life events. The students were asked whether they experienced the following events: “financial distress,” “victimized by violence,” “unwilling separation from lover,” “gender discrimination,” “gender dysphoria,” “parents' bad relationship, separation, or divorce,” “severe illness or death of a close friend or relative,” “unwilling admission,” “difficulty in research,” “difficulty in job hunting,” “bad relationship with family,” “bad relationship with friends and colleagues,” and “stressful part-time job.” Sex was also added as an explanatory variable. The response variable was high versus low risk of severe mental illness. Statistical analyses were performed using the Statistical Package for the Social Sciences software version 28 (IBM). A total of 1068 students (593 men and 475 women) participated in the study. The mode of the K10 score was 0 and the median, first, and third quartiles were 3, 0, and 9, respectively. Altogether, 158 students scored ≥15 (i.e., higher than the cut-off point6) and they were classified as the “high risk” group. Table 1 shows a summary of the results of the binary logistic regression analysis with the stepwise method. The factors retained in the final multivariate model were “victimized by violence,” “gender discrimination,” “parents' bad relationship, separation, or divorce,” “unwilling admission,” “bad relationship with family,” and “stressful part-time job.” The current study indicated that various negative life events are associated with the risk of developing severe mental illness among university students, which is consistent with the findings of previous studies1, 2 Among the events in their school life, “unwilling admission” and “stressful part-time job” were associated with the risk, but the other events were not. Many students with psychiatric disorders who visit health administration facilities complain that they became depressed or anxious because of problems with their school life such as difficulty in job hunting or bad relationship with friends and colleges. However, the present results showed that some of these difficulties are not specific to those who have severe mental illness but are experienced by many students regardless of whether they are clinically depressed or anxious. It is important to listen to them, but our results suggest that sometimes it is necessary to normalize these events as ordinary life experiences. Concurrently, psychiatrists and clinical psychologists should be aware that students with mental illness may have experienced some negative events outside of university life, such as “victimized by violence,” “gender discrimination” “parents' bad relationship, separation, or divorce,” or “bad relationship with family.” These might not have been addressed at their first admission but addressing them during therapy is necessary. The major limitation of this study is that the results cannot be generalized to all university students. A low Nagelkerke R-squared value shows that explanatory variables do not explain the response variable well. Some unmeasured factors may have influenced the risk of students' mental illness. In conclusion, when treating students with mental illness, we should remind they might have various psychosocial factors. Y.F.N. drafted the questionnaire and it was approved by all the authors. Y.F.N., T.M., and Y.K. performed the survey. Y.F.N. analyzed the data and drafted the manuscript. The final version of the manuscript was approved by all the authors. N/A. This study was supported by Grants-in-Aid for Scientific Research [18K09994]. The authors declare no conflict of interest. This study was approved by the ethics committee of Ibaraki University (N. 180200). Written informed consent was not obtained, but along with the actual questionnaire, written information was distributed to inform the students about the study. Participation was voluntary and those who agreed to answer the questionnaire participated in the survey. N/A. The data that support the findings of this study are available from the corresponding author (Y.F.N.) upon reasonable request.