Greater access and the increased diversity of people entering higher education are some of the reasons why the mental health of university students has become more relevant in recent times. In this regard, a young Imhay researcher is delving into methodologies to analyze the inequities that students must deal with.

Scarlett Mac-Ginty, a young researcher at Imhay, is currently a PhD student at the Population Health and Research Service, Institute of Psychiatry, Psychology and Neuroscience, King’s College London.

Although she is a dentist by profession, social and health management issues are what drive the work of Scarlett Mac-Ginty, a young Imhay researcher. This interest led her to pursue a Master’s degree in Public Health from the University of Chile and, a few years ago, she began a doctorate in the Health Service and Population Research at the Institute of Psychiatry, Psychology and Neuroscience at King’s College London, where she also teaches undergraduate and master’s students.

Scarlett Mac-Ginty’s doctoral research in England focuses on health inequities, specifically the mental health of university students. The first work of her thesis consisted of a systematic review of more than 20,000 scientific articles to see what data existed in the international literature on the association between health problems and social inequalities, particularly the economic position of young people. This arduous work led her to identify that most studies indicate that the lower a person’s economic position, the more mental health problems they have, such as depression and anxiety.

«There we saw that one of the important factors is mothers’ education, which is an interesting topic, because many times the education of the male head of household is measured. We also reviewed other factors such as environmental factors, where, for example, we see that people who have food insecurity are also more likely to have depression and anxiety,» explains this young Imhay researcher.

The review of the scientific literature revealed another interesting fact: almost 50% of the studies on higher education students were conducted between 2020 and 2022, and half of them during the confinement caused by the Covid-19 pandemic. This shows that there is currently a growing interest in the world in researching the mental health of young people at the university stage.

Why is this happening? «First, because there has been a diversification and increase in enrollment in higher education in recent years, and this enrollment has grown mainly in middle- and low-income countries,» explains the King’s College London doctoral candidate.

«However, there is still a gap, as countries with higher incomes still have higher enrollment. But middle- and low-income countries, proportionally, have not only seen an increase in the number of people entering higher education, but also in their diversity. So the focus has been on university students, because before, those who entered university were an elite, and now they are no longer so».

Mediating factors

As part of her doctoral thesis, Scarlett Mac-Ginty is participating in research conducted within the framework of the Longitudinal Study of Mental Health in University Students (ELSAM), an initiative of Harvard University and the World Health Organization that is applied in 18 countries, with the aim of monitoring the mental health of young people throughout their university career. The Millennium Nucleus Imhay leads the project in our country, carrying out the study in five Chilean universities.

«We have often observed the association between socioeconomic factors and mental health, but we know little about what the mediating variables are. For example, why do people from families with lower incomes or those who are the first generation to attend higher education have worse mental health? In this sense, we have seen that students who have a greater perception of financial stress have more mental health problems, so this would be a mediator that connects socioeconomic positions with depression and anxiety, specifically.»

The same happens with academic stress, says the researcher, which is generally higher in people with lower resources and contributes to having more mood problems. Finally, certain socio-educational conditions also have an influence, such as whether they have a place to study and access to a computer and the Internet.

A look over time

Scarlett is currently working on another study for her doctorate, also based on the data generated by ELSAM. her goal is to learn how changes in socioeconomic position over time impact the incidence and persistence of mental health problems.

«Of the nearly 80 studies we included in the systematic review, only two showed longitudinal associations between socioeconomic position and common mental disorders, so there is a significant knowledge gap to see what happens over time with these students who come from lower socioeconomic backgrounds. So far we have found that the most important factor is family income,» says the young researcher.