In Spring 2020, around 40.9 percent of college students in the United States reported having depression, compared to 35.7 percent in Fall 2019. This statistic illustrates the prevalence of select mental health and substance use issues among college students in the United States in Fall 2019 and Spring 2020.

This study examined commonly endured mental health challenges among emerging adults in college before, during, and after the COVID-19 pandemic. In this repeated cross-sectional study, different samples of undergraduates 18-26 years old were recruited from a large public university during pre-pandemic (Fall 2019, N=500), pandemic onset (Spring 2020, N=420), academic year 1 (Fall 2020-Spring 2021, N=700), academic year 2 (Fall 2021-Spring 2022, N=1,195), academic year 3 (Fall 2022-Spring 2023, N=1,004), and post-pandemic (Fall 2023, N=516). Participants completed an online survey assessing stress (Perceived Stress Scale-10), depression (Patient Health Questionnaire-8), and anxiety (Generalized Anxiety Disorder-7) symptoms.

High rates of mental ill-health in postgraduate researchers (PGRs) represent a significant barrier to life satisfaction and academic success. Nevertheless, there is little knowledge about the extent and origins of mental health problems of PGRs in the UK. The current study addresses this gap by assessing investigating the prevalence and provenance of anxiety, depression, sleep problems, subjective mental wellbeing, and suicide behaviours of PGRs in the UK. An online survey (N=479) was used to measure the mental health outcomes and assess their relationship with influence of demographic, trait and academic variables, and social support. We found a high prevalence of mental ill-health and low levels of wellbeing in the current sample. Factors associated with poorer outcomes were female and non-binary gender, non-heterosexual identity, maladaptive perfectionism, workaholism and being in the 5th year of study or above. Resilience, adaptive perfectionism, higher levels of social support and positive evaluations of progress and preparation, departmental climate, and supervisory relationship were associated with more positive outcomes. The current findings contribute new knowledge about the prevalence of mental health symptoms in PGRs in the UK, implying that institutional efforts to improve PGR wellbeing should include strategies to promote equality, diversity, resilience, integration and work-life balance of PGRs.

Ongoing concern for the unique mental health challenges faced by university students has been magnified by the disruption of the global COVID-19 pandemic since March 2020. This study aimed to investigate changes in mental health and wellbeing outcomes for UK university students since the pandemic began, and to examine whether more vulnerable groups were disproportionately impacted. Students at a UK university responded to anonymous online cross-sectional surveys in 2019 (N = 2637), 2020 (N = 3693), and 2021 (N = 2772). Students completed measures of depression, anxiety and subjective wellbeing (SWB). Multivariable logistic regression models investigated associations of survey year and sociodemographic characteristics with mental health and SWB. Compared to 2019, fewer students showed high levels of depression and anxiety symptoms in 2020. However, there was evidence of worsened levels of anxiety and SWB in 2021 compared to 2019. Interaction effects indicated that students from a Black, Asian or minority ethnicity background and students previously diagnosed with a mental health difficulty showed improved outcomes in 2021 compared to previous years. There is a need for sector-wide strategies including preventative approaches, appropriate treatment options for students already experiencing difficulties and ongoing monitoring post-pandemic.

A survey of college students in the United States in 2023-2024 found that around 38 percent had symptoms of depression. Symptoms of depression vary in severity and can include a loss of interest/pleasure in things once found enjoyable, feelings of sadness and hopelessness, fatigue, changes in sleep, and thoughts of death or suicide. Mental health among college students Due to the life changes and stress that often come with attending college, mental health problems are not unusual among college students. The most common mental health problems college students have been diagnosed with are anxiety disorders and depression. Fortunately, these are two of the most treatable forms of mental illness, with psychotherapy and/or medications the most frequent means of treatment. However, barriers to access mental health services persist, with around 22 percent of college students stating that in the past year financial reasons caused them to receive fewer services for their mental or emotional health than they would have otherwise received. Depression in the United States Depression is not only a problem among college students but affects people of all ages. In 2021, around ten percent of those aged 26 to 49 years in the United States reported a major depressive episode in the past year. Depression in the United States is more prevalent among females than males, but suicide is almost four times more common among males than females. Death rates due to suicide in the U.S. have increased for both genders in the past few years, highlighting the issue of depression and other mental health disorders and the need for easy access to mental health services.

Cognitive behavioral therapy is an effective treatment for improving mental health problems among university students. However, intervention components have different effects on mental health problems. This paper is a meta-analysis of the data concerning the relationship between cognitive behavioral variables and mental health status among university students. A total of 4 electronic databases were reviewed, and 1,227 articles met the initial selection criteria. Reviewers applied standardized coding schemes to extract the correlational relationship between cognitive behavioral variables and mental health status. A total of 54 articles were included in the meta-analysis. Correlations were found for three cognitive behavioral variables (attention, thought, and behavior) across nine mental health domains (negative affect, positive affect, happiness, social function, stress response, psychological symptom, quality of life, well-being, and general health). Across each cognitive behavioral process and all mental health domains, the estimated mean correlation is modest (.29 - .41), and the correlation depended on the domain of mental health.

Dataset accompanying the data descriptor for publication in Scientific Data entitled: Data on the prevalence of psychiatric symptoms in UK university students. More specifically, the current data provides crucial information concerning the prevalence of anxiety, depression, mania, insomnia, stress, suicidal ideation, psychotic experiences and loneliness amongst a sample of N=1408 UK university students. A cross-sectional online questionnaire-based study was implemented. Online recruitment for this dataset began on September 17th, 2018, and ended on the 30th July 2019. Eight validated measures were used: Generalized Anxiety Disorder Scale; Patient Health Questionnaire; The Mood Disorder Questionnaire; The Sleep Condition Indicator; The Perceived Stress Scale; Suicidal Behaviours Questionnaire-Revised; The Prodromal Questionnaire 16 (PQ-16); and the University of California Loneliness Scale.

ObjectivesThe period of entry into university represents one of vulnerability to substance use for university students. The goal of this study is to document the 12-month prevalence of substance use disorders among first year university students in Kenya, and to test whether there is an association between substance use disorders and mental disorders.MethodsThis was a cross-sectional online survey conducted in 2019 and 2020 as part of the World Health Organization’s World Mental Health International College Student (WMH-ICS) survey initiative. A total of 334 university students completed the survey. Descriptive statistics were used to summarize the demographic characteristics of the participants. Multivariate logistic regression was used to assess the association between substance use disorder and mental disorders after adjusting for age and gender.ResultsThe 12-month prevalence for alcohol use disorder was 3.3%, while the 12-month prevalence for other substance use disorder was 6.9%. Adjusting for age and gender, there was an association between any substance use disorder and major depression, generalized anxiety disorder, bipolar 1 disorder, intermittent explosive disorder, social anxiety disorder, suicidal ideation, suicide attempt, and non-suicidal self-injury.ConclusionThese findings highlight the need to institute policies and interventions in universities in Kenya that address substance use disorders and comorbid mental disorders among first-year students.

The College Experience Study represents the most extensive longitudinal mobile sensing study to date, leveraging passive and automatic sensing data from the smartphones of over 200 Dartmouth students across five years (2017 - 2022). This groundbreaking research aimed to assess their mental health (e.g., depression, stress), the impact of COVID-19, and general behavioral trends.

The study's importance has been magnified during the global pandemic, necessitating a better understanding of mental health dynamics among undergraduate students throughout their college years. By tracking two cohorts of first-year students both on and off campus, we have accumulated a rich dataset offering insights into changing behaviors, resilience, and mental health in college life. We hope that this dataset will serve as a cornerstone for researchers, educators, and policymakers alike, seeking to enhance their understanding and interventions related to student mental health and behavior.

This dataset is unique for several reasons. It encompasses deep phone sensing data and self-reports spanning four continuous years for 200 undergraduate students at Dartmouth College, both during term time and breaks. Additionally, it incorporates periodic brain-imaging data for this cohort of students, along with surveys. The College Experience dataset enables researchers to explore numerous issues in behavioral sensing and brain imaging to advance our understanding of college students' mental health.

:rocket: Updates

• Apr 15th 2025: Raw app usage (i.e., list of running apps) is now available.
• Dec 5th 2024: Raw call logs, sms logs, and unlocks are now available.
• Oct 27th 2024: Raw sensing data will be released in batches over the next few weeks!

Content

College Experience Study makes use of the StudentLife app, developed for Android and iOS, autonomously capturing a variety of human behaviors 24/7, including:

• Bed time, wake up time, and sleep duration
• The number of conversations and the duration of each conversation per day (Android only)
• Physical activity (walking, sitting, running, standing)
• Locations visited and duration of stay (e.g., dorm, class, party, gym)
• Stress levels over weeks and throughout college
• App usage (Android only)
• COVID concern
• and more

In addition to passive sensing data, our study also involved gathering responses from detailed surveys and conducting brain scans throughout the research period. These diverse data sources can be used together to uncover insightful correlations and draw meaningful conclusions. An illustrative example of this potential is explored in the study "Predicting Brain Functional Connectivity Using Mobile Sensing", which demonstrates how mobile sensing data can predict brain functional connectivity, offering new avenues for understanding mental health conditions.

Data Availability

Note: Some features are exclusive to Android phones. Each folder includes a data definition file detailing the features and their availability across Android and iOS. Also, note that some features like conversation tracking initially covered both user groups but were later restricted due to iOS policy changes so they might be available for iOS users only during the beginning of the study.

For more details, refer to the College Experience Study paper and the original StudentLife website.

Term Definitions and Academic Calendars

For additional context and understanding of the timeline relevant to the dataset, below are the archived links to Dartmouth College's calendars. These archives provide an overview and detailed breakdown of significant dates for each academic year covered by the study:

This is a survey-based dataset. A cross-sectional survey including total 1328 individuals, age range from 18-40 years, was conducted. The preponderance of participants primarily involved university students (1278 individuals) with diverse socio-economic spectrums. The survey was structured to elicit a plethora of information about COVID-19 psychological effects on Bangladeshi University students only. The survey queries are compiled through online platforms, and the contributors have not been compensated for their valuable time. The data was analysed using Google Colab and Microsoft Excel 2019. Microsoft Excel was used to sort, clean, update, and analyse the original dataset. The sorted data was utilized to undertake a more comprehensive analysis, each characteristic and its impact on mental health was extensively investigated.

Three distinct models were created to anticipate university students’ CAS (COVID Anxiety Scale) and HADS (Hospital Anxiety and Depression Scale) results.

Question Segment: Coronavirus Anxiety Scale (CAS) has a cumulative of 5 questionnaires, scale set to (0-8) Negative and (9-20) positive. On a positive scale, individuals with a cumulative summation of cas_scale_sum> 8 are classified as having COVID Anxiety. The Hospital Anxiety and Depression Scale (HADS) consists of 14 questions ranging in difficulty from (0-3). The rating system was portioned into three categories: normal (0–7), borderline abnormal (8–10), and abnormal (11-21). Prior to completing the survey, participants were instructed on the HADS questionnaire.

This is the second (wave 2) in a series of follow up reports to the Mental Health and Young People Survey (MHCYP) 2017, exploring the mental health of children and young people in February/March 2021, during the Coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic and changes since 2017. Experiences of family life, education, and services during the COVID-19 pandemic are also examined. The sample for the Mental Health Survey for Children and Young People, 2021 (MHCYP 2021), wave 2 follow up was based on 3,667 children and young people who took part in the MHCYP 2017 survey, with both surveys also drawing on information collected from parents. Cross-sectional analyses are presented, addressing three primary aims: Aim 1: Comparing mental health between 2017 and 2021 – the likelihood of a mental disorder has been assessed against completion of the Strengths and Difficulties Questionnaire (SDQ) in both years in Topic 1 by various demographics. Aim 2: Describing life during the COVID-19 pandemic - Topic 2 examines the circumstances and experiences of children and young people in February/March 2021 and the preceding months, covering: COVID-19 infection and symptoms. Feelings about social media use. Family connectedness. Family functioning. Education, including missed days of schooling, access to resources, and support for those with Special Educational Needs and Disabilities (SEND). Changes in circumstances. How lockdown and restrictions have affected children and young people’s lives. Seeking help for mental health concerns. Aim 3: Present more detailed data on the mental health, circumstances and experiences of children and young people by ethnic group during the coronavirus pandemic (where sample sizes allow). The data is broken down by gender and age bands of 6 to 10 year olds and 11 to 16 year olds for all categories, and 17 to 22 years old for certain categories where a time series is available, as well as by whether a child is unlikely to have a mental health disorder, possibly has a mental health disorder and probably has a mental health disorder. This study was funded by the Department of Health and Social Care, commissioned by NHS Digital, and carried out by the Office for National Statistics, the National Centre for Social Research, University of Cambridge and University of Exeter.

Objective: This study aimed to understand Black American women’s attitudes toward seeking mental health services and using mobile technology to receive support for managing anxiety and depression. Methods: A self-administered web-based questionnaire was launched in October 2019 and closed in January 2020. Women who identify as Black/African American were eligible to participate. The survey consisted of approximately 70 questions and covered topics such as attitudes toward seeking professional psychological help, acceptability of using a mobile phone to receive mental health care, and screening for anxiety and depression. Results - Anxiety: The findings of the study (N=395) showed that younger Black women were more likely to have greater severity of anxiety than their older counterparts. Respondents were most comfortable with the use of a voice call or video call to communicate with a professional to receive support to manage anxiety in comparison to text messaging or mobile app. Younger..., , , This README file was generated on 2023-10-04 by Dr. Terika McCall.

GENERAL INFORMATION

1. Title of Dataset: Attitudes Toward Seeking Mental Health Services and Use of Mobile Technology Survey.
2. Author Information A. Principal Investigator Contact Information Name: Terika McCall Institution: Division of Health Informatics, Department of Biostatistics, Yale School of Public Health Address: 60 College Street, New Haven, CT, 06510, United States Email: terika.mccall@yale.edu
3. Date of data collection (single date, range, approximate date): October 2019 to January 2020
4. Geographic location of data collection: United States
5. Information about funding sources that supported the collection of the data: RO1 LM013477, T15 LM012500

SHARING/ACCESS INFORMATION

1. Licenses/restrictions placed on the data: None

2. Links to publications that cite or use the data:

   McCall T, Foster M, Schwartz TA. Attitudes toward seeking mental health services and mobile techno...

The COVID-19 pandemic was a substantial stressor, especially for pregnant individuals.

• This Dataset aimed to understand the impact of COVID-19-related stresses on pregnant individuals and their infants and collected survey-based data across Canada as part of the Pregnancy during the COVID-19 Pandemic (PdP) project.

• Here are some information about the data:

• Maternal_Age: Maternal age (years) at intake

• Household_Income: What is the total household income, before taxes and deductions, of all the household members from all sources in 2019

• Maternal_Education: Maternal education 1- Less than high school 2- diploma 3- High school diploma 4- College/trade school 5- Undergraduate degree 6- Master's degree 7- Doctoral Degree

• EPDS: Edinburgh Postnatal Depression Scale (you can find the survey on the internet)

• PROMIS_Anxiety: Score from 7 to 35 with higher scores indicating greater severity of anxiety.

• GAbirth: Gestational age at birth (in weeks)

• Delivery_Date: Delivery Date (Dates converted to month/year of birth)

• Birth_Length: Birth length in cm

• Birth_Weight: Birth weight in grams

• Delivery_Mode: Vaginally or Caesarean-section (c-section)

• NICU_stay: Was your infant admitted to the NICU?

• Language: Survey language

• Threaten_Life: How much do (did) you think your life is (was) in danger during the COVID-19 pandemic? (0-100)

• Threaten_Baby_Danger: How much do (did) you think your unborn baby's life is (was) in danger at any time during the COVID-19 pandemic? (0-100)

• Threaten_Baby_Harm: How much are you worried that exposure to the COVID-19 virus will harm your unborn baby? (0-100)

I hope you find it useful

Parental mental illness is associated with poorer outcomes for offspring including elevated risk of intergenerational transmission of psychiatric symptoms. Ascertaining whether mental health service users have children is a clinical requirement in UK health services. Acknowledgement of a patient’s parenting role is necessary to enable engagement with their parenting experience and to facilitate support, both of which are associated with improved outcomes for the parent-child dyad.
The aim was to investigate the practice of mental health practitioners working in UK adult mental health services with regard to the following: Ascertaining whether patients have children; engagement with the parenting role of patients; engagement with the construct of ‘think patient as parent’. A survey of 1178 adult mental health multi-disciplinary practitioners working in 15 mental health trusts in England revealed that 25 per cent of practitioners did not routinely ascertain whether patients had dependent children. Less than half of practitioners engaged with the parenting experience or the potential impact of parental mental health on children.

ESRC funded doctoral research study on parenting in the context of mental health difficulties including clinical engagement

E-mental health services (eMHSs) offer a promising approach to promote mental health among post-secondary students. Still, many university students are reluctant to use eMHSs, and little is known about effective communication strategies to improve attitudes as antecedents of eMHS acceptance. The aim of this experiment was thus to explore the effects of information varying in the degree of targeting on students ́attitudes towards eMHSs. Four hundred fifty-one students (Mean=32.6 years, SD=10.2, 75% female) were randomly assigned to one of four study arms. While all participants read the same general information that also served as control condition (arm 1, “information only”, n=116), the other three experimental arms additionally received information and testimonials on specific eMHSs differing in addressed target groups. These testimonials were either unspecific (arm 2, n=112), targeted to employees (arm 3, n=115) or targeted to students (arm 4, n=108). We analyzed attitudes towards eMHSs for stress coping and therapy, as well as potential determinants of attitude change. Two-way ANOVA revealed no impact of providing information on the alteration of attitudes towards eMHSs for stress coping (d =0.20). Only a significant but small effect of targeted testimonial on attitudes towards online therapies was identified at post-intervention (d =0.29). Regression analyses revealed statistically significant positive influences of source credibility and perceived similarity on attitude (ps <0.01), as well as a partial mediation effect of perceived similarity in favor of testimonials targeted to students (95% CI [0.22, 0.50]). Overall, this study indicates no meaningful impact of the presented information on attitudes and limited evidence for positive effects of tailored information cues. However, attitudes were already positive at baseline. Further research with a representative sample of university students is needed to gain an in-depth understanding of contextual factors influencing attitudes and relevant attributes for the optimal design of psychoeducational information on eMHSs.
Here, we provide the anonymized data sets on the per-protocol (n=451) and the intention-to-treat (IIT) analyses (n=482) for non-commercial scientific purposes and as supplementary material for a publication. The online experiment explored the influence of narrative information cues on attitudes towards and the acceptance of eMHSs. Although the provided data sets include data for analyzing both study parts (attitudes and acceptance), we only present additional files on the attitude part that will be presented in an upcoming publication. Data set A (German original) and the data set B (with English translation of variable names) refers to the per protocol analysis of valid data sets according to predefined criteria (n=451), while data C includes data for the IIT-analysis (n=482). In addition, we have added the syntax files for the per protocol as well as the IIT analyses (SPSS; sav.files for data sets and sps.-files for the syntax files) and output files on the IIT analyses (pdf.-versions of the spv.files), since details on the IIT analyses will be only partly reported in an upcoming publication due to the length of the paper (i.e., demographic data, hypotheses 1-4). In the planned publication, we have mainly focused on the per protocol analyses. Furthermore, we have uploaded the study information, original full questionnaire including the instructions and text-based informational interventions for the experimental groups (German) and screen shots of the original code book. In the publication that is currently under review, we will provide English translations of the study materials (e.g., the stimulus materials, including testimonials) as well as additional ancillary results as supplementary files. The results on other outcomes, such intentions to use eMHSs (acceptance outcomes), will be potentially reported elsewhere (status date: January 15, 2021). The data for the GESIS repository was prepared and double-checked by two researchers (JAH and FW).
Findings of the online experiment have also been presented at two conferences: Wopperer, J., Apolinário-Hagen, J., Wals, F., Harrer, M., Kemper, J., Salewski, C., Lehr, D., & Ebert, D.D. (05.09.2019). Exploring the usefulness of testimonials as a tool to improve the acceptance of e-mental health interventions among university students: preliminary results of a pilot RCT. Poster session, 6th Conferen...

This dataset examines the connection between mental health and various demographic, academic, and lifestyle factors. It includes attributes such as gender, age, academic pressure, study satisfaction, sleep duration, dietary habits, study hours, financial stress, family history of mental illness, depression, and suicidal thoughts. The dataset enables an exploration of how factors like sleep quality, diet, and academic workload impact mental well-being, offering potential applications in identifying patterns of mental health risks and promoting preventive strategies for improved mental health outcomes among different demographic groups.

The data has been generated by ethnographic observations, interviews and interactions with migrant workers in two sites in Shanghai in 2017/2018: Songjiang District on the south-western outskirts, and the inner-city Huangpu District, in proximity to some of the city’s most famous tourist attractions, such as the Bund or Nanjing Road. Ethnography, with its focus on everyday experience, can yield significant insights into understanding migrant mental health in contexts where signs of severe mental distress remain largely imperceptible, and more generally, into how stresses and strains are lived through the spaces, times and affective atmospheres of the city. Migrant ethnography can help us reconsider the oft-made connection between everyday stress and mental ill health. In this research, drawing on field evidence in central and peripheral Shanghai, we highlight the importance of attending to the forms of spatial and temporal agency through which migrants actively manage the ways in which the city affects their subjectivity. These everyday subjective practices serve to problematize the very concept of ‘mental health’, enabling us to engage in a critical dialogue with sociological and epidemiological research that assesses migrant mental health states through the lens of the vulnerability or resilience of this social group, often reducing citiness to a series of environmental ‘stressors’.

We have known, since at least the early twentieth century, that there is an association between living in a city and being diagnosed with a mental illness. But questions around the specificity of relationship between urban life and have continued well into the twenty-first century. We still don't know, for example, exactly why mental illness clusters in cities; we don't know how it relates to experiences of urban poverty, deprivation, overcrowding, social exclusion, and racism; and we don't know the precise biological and sociological mechanisms that turn difficult urban lives into diagnosable mental health conditions. What we do know is that migrants into cities bear a disproportionately large share of the burden of urban mental illness; we know that dense living conditions seem to exacerbate the problem; and we know that the general stress, tumult and precarity of urban living can, sometimes, create the basis for the development of clinical problems. If there are unanswered questions around the relationship between mental health and the city, these questions are particularly acute in contemporary China: China has urbanised at an unprecedented rate in the last decade, and has now become a majority urban society. But whereas in nineteenth-century Europe urbanization came from a growth in population, in twenty-first century China the situation is different: most of the growth is from rural migrants coming into the cities. In China, then, the link between urban transformation and mental illness is a critical issue: (1) Development in China is related to migration from the countryside into the cities; (2) Unrecognized and untreated mental disorder is a key factor in casting individuals and families into poverty and social exclusion; (3) Effective development of urban mental health policu requires far greater understanding of the related problems of urban stress, precarious living conditions and mental disorder. This project is an attempt to understand the relationship between migration and mental health in one Chinese mega-city: Shanghai. Given what we know about the relationship between urban mental health and particular patterns of social life (poverty, migration, dense housing, and so on), it starts from the position that this question requires new input from the social sciences. At the heart of the project is an attempt to mix what we know about mental health in contemporary Shanghai with a new kind of close-up, street-level data on what the daily experience of being a migrant on Shanghai is actually life - especially with regard to stress, housing, and access to services. We will then connect these two forms of knowledge to produce a new kind of survey for getting a new sociological deep surveying instrument for mapping migrant mental health in Shanghai. The project, which is split between researchers in the UK and China, asks: (1) How is mental disorder actually patterned in Shanghai, and how is that pattern affected by recent migration? (2) How are immigrants absorbed in Shanghai, and what is daily life actually like in Shanghai's migrant communities? (3) What policies, services, or laws might alleviate mental health among migrants in Shanghai? (4) What can be learned in Shanghai for similar problems in other developing mega-cities (such as Sao Paolo or Lagos). This project should also us to also produce new data on two of the major research-areas that are prioritised under this join UK-China research-scheme: 'Migration and public services,' where we will look at the relationship between the welfare system and migration, and analyse the services that currently help to alleviate this problem, as well as migrants' access to those services; (2) 'Inequalities and everyday life,' where we will develop a close-up, street-level analysis of the lived inequalities of everyday migrant life in Shanghai, and try to understand how urban inequality might contribute to the development of mental health problems?

The SEP-MD study is a linked cohort created to explore the relationships between neighbourhood and individual factors and mortality, inpatient admissions and long-term unemployment in people with severe mental health conditions. Using individual data from the 2011 United Kingdom Census, combined with clinical records from the South London & Maudsley Trust, and death registrations, the study created a linked cohort which includes almost 20,000 individuals with a diagnosis of severe mental illness. Participants are followed up through routinely collected clinical, census and mortality data, which currently spans from 2007 to 2019.

IntroductionPsychological wellbeing in university students is receiving increased focus. However, to date, few longitudinal studies in this population have been conducted. As such, in 2019, we established the Student Wellbeing At Northern England Universities (SWANS) cohort at the University of York, United Kingdom aiming to measure student mental health and wellbeing every six months. Furthermore, the study period included the COVID-19 pandemic, giving an opportunity to track student wellbeing over time, including over the pandemic.MethodsEligible participants were invited to participate via email. Data were collected, using Qualtrics, from September 2019 to April 2021, across five waves (W1 to W5). In total, n = 4,622 students participated in at least one wave of the survey. Data collection included sociodemographic, educational, personality measures, and mental health and wellbeing. Latent profile analyses were performed, exploring trajectories of student wellbeing over the study period for those who had completed at least three of the five waves of the survey (n = 765), as measured by the Warwick-Edinburgh Mental Wellbeing Scale (WEMWBS).ResultsFive latent profile trajectories of student wellbeing were identified. Of these, the two latent classes with initially higher wellbeing scores had broadly stable wellbeing across time (total n = 505, 66%). Two classes had lower initial scores, which lowered further across time (total n = 227, 30%). Additionally, a fifth class of students was identified who improved substantially over the study period, from a mean WEMWBS of 30.4 at W1, to 49.4 at W5 (n = 33, 4%). Risk factors for having less favourable wellbeing trajectories generally included identifying as LGBT+, self-declaring a disability, or previously being diagnosed with a mental health condition.ConclusionOur findings suggest a mixed picture of the effect of the COVID-19 pandemic on student wellbeing, with a majority showing broadly consistent levels of wellbeing across time, a smaller but still substantial group showing a worsening of wellbeing, and a small group that showed a very marked improvement in wellbeing. Those from groups traditionally underrepresented in higher education were most at risk of poorer wellbeing. This raises questions as to whether future support for wellbeing should target specific student subpopulations.