Identifying Barriers to Mental Health Service Utilization Among Heavy Drinking Community College Students

Physical and mental health issues facing community college students

ObjectiveTo examine health concerns among community college (CC) students by (1) identifying and coding the self-reported health issues facing CC students and (2) examining demographic and psychosocial variables associated with health categories. Participants: 946 CC students (M_age = 26.37) recruited from January 2017 to February 2017 who completed a screening survey for a larger study. Students were asked to "List three health issues facing Community College students today." Methods: Health issues were coded into broad categories and subcategories. Results: Among the 2,601 health issues reported, one-third were medical health (36%), one-third were mental health (33%), with substance use (14%), other health (14%), and access to health care (3%) also reported. The most commonly identified health issues were "general medical issues," "stress," "depression," and "sleep." Conclusions: Programmatic efforts to support CC students and promote prevention/intervention strategies for mental health, sleep, substance use, access to health care, and general medical concerns, remain essential.

Multiple Health Risk Factors in Vocational Education Students: A Systematic Review

Health risk factors such as tobacco smoking, inadequate fruit intake, inadequate vegetable intake, risky alcohol consumption, physical inactivity, obesity, anxiety and depression often commence during adolescence and young adulthood. Vocational education institutions enrol many students in these age groups making them an important setting for addressing multiple health risk factors. This systematic review examined (i) co-occurrence of health risk factors, (ii) clustering of health risk factors, and (iii) socio-demographic characteristics associated with co-occurrence and/or clusters of health risks among vocational education students. MEDLINE, PsycINFO, EMBASE, CINAHL and Scopus were searched to identify eligible studies published by 30 June 2020. Two reviewers independently extracted data and assessed methodological quality using the National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute Quality Assessment Tool. Five studies assessed co-occurrence and three studies clustering of health risks. Co-occurrence of health risk factors ranged from 29–98% and clustering of alcohol use and tobacco smoking was commonly reported. The findings were mixed about whether gender and age were associated with co-occurrence or clustering of health risks. There is limited evidence examining co-occurrence and clustering of health risk factors in vocational education students. Comprehensive assessment of how all these health risks co-occur or cluster in vocational education students is required.