Female students at UK universities were more than twice as likely as male students to have been affected by poor mental health in recent years, new analysis suggests.
The report, by the Policy Institute at King’s College London and the Centre for Transforming Access and Student Outcomes in Higher Education, also found much worse mental health among white students, those who went to state school, and members of the transgender community than the average population.
It found that between the 2016-17 and 2022-23 academic years, the share of undergraduate students at universities across the UK who said they had experienced mental health difficulties almost tripled from 6 per cent to 16 per cent.
The analysis – which draws on a dataset of 82,682 respondents from the annual Higher Education Policy Institute and Advance HE Student Academic Experience Survey – shows experiences of mental health among undergraduates are deeply unequal, with some groups much more affected than others.
