Citation

Véron L, Sauvade F, Le Barbenchon E. Psychol. Francaise 2020; 65(1): 49-59.

Copyright

(Copyright © 2020, Société française de psychologie)

DOI

10.1016/j.psfr.2018.12.001

PMID

unavailable

Abstract

Feeling of unease is frequently reported among French students in survey from mutual insurance institutions. However, these studies have not investigated psychological clinical issues of this feeling. The present study aimed to state about psychological distress, major depression or suicidal risk prevalence among French students. We used a diagnostic methodology based on validated tools set including MH-5 (Mental Health Inventory from Medical Outcome Study Short Form; Ware & Sherbourne, 1992), MINI-A, MINI-C (Mini International Neuropsychiatric Interview; Sheehan & Lecrubier, 1992) and BDI-II (Beck Depression Inventory; Beck, Steer, & Brown, 1996). We targeted students living in university students' residences because of their higher risk of psychological fragility due to the distance with their families and some socio-economic difficulties. A total of 1324 students (53.55% females; Mean Age = 21.1), recruited by door-to-door method, participated in structured clinical interviews. We observed that 20.99% were diagnosed with a psychological distress state, 5.1% in major depression and 5.14% were currently at-risk of suicide. The higher at-risk students were females, studying languages or humanities for the first year at university. However, only 2.7% of them used psychological health care. We discuss the benefits of our diagnostic method to avoid "false positive" cases. Our study then emphasizes the pressing need to understand why only few French students seek psychological health care and how they could be promoted. © 2018 Société Française de Psychologie

Language: en

Keywords

Students; Depression; Psychological distress; Suicidal risk; Door-to-door