ONS: Over half of university students say their mental health has deteriorated

MORE than half of university students said their mental health and wellbeing had deteriorated since the start of the last term, according to an Office for National Statistics (ONS) survey.

More than one-fifth of participants said it had got “much worse” when asked towards the end of November.

In total, 57 per cent of students polled in the ONS survey said their mental health and wellbeing had worsened to some degree since the start of the autumn term.

Students are significantly more anxious than the general population of Great Britain, with mean scores of 5.3 compared with 4.2 respectively, where 0 is “not anxious at all” and 10 is “completely anxious”, the report found.

Meanwhile, more than half of respondents to the ONS survey of more than 2,000 students in England were either “dissatisfied” or “very dissatisfied” with their social experience over the first months of the academic year.

The ONS survey – which carried out between 20 and 25 November, found that 51 per cent of students said they are likely to request a refund of some or all their tuition fees if all university teaching is carried out online from January.