Vicious cycle of students’ financial burdens and mental health

Average undergraduate tuition fees in Canada increased by 1.9 per cent between 2014 ($6,191) and 2015 ($5,998), and this number accounts for inflation over the year. In recent research, Thomas Richardson, a clinical psychologist working in the National Health Service (NHS) in England and a visiting academic in psychology at the University of Southampton, found that educational price tags are impacting more than students’ bank accounts

“A few years ago, the parliament here in the UK was debating whether to increase tuition fees in England and Wales from about three and a half thousand pounds a year up to nine thousand, so near on tripling the fees, just like that,” Richardson says. “I knew that there was research showing, not surprisingly, a link between debt and mental health problems in students. So I basically sought to test that out.”

Richardson and his colleagues studied the relationship between financial stressors on students in the United Kingdom, and their mental health and alcohol use. They found that students who were struggling to pay bills had symptoms of anxiety and alcohol dependence that become worse over time. Students who worried about their debt experienced worsening levels of stress, anxiety and depression.

“What [research] is starting to show is how much in fees you’re paying and how much your student loan is isn’t as important for mental health as being able to get by day-to-day,” explains Richardson. “So actually being able to pay the bills is the most important thing.”

The researchers asked 400 undergraduate students in the UK various questions about their financial situations and attitudes toward their finances at four time points during their first year of university. This research method of observing participants over time allowed Richardson and his colleagues to assess whether students’ financial burdens or mental health issues come first.

The results showed that students who had worse mental health and problems at the beginning of the study had increasing levels of financial burden over time. Also, students who had financial struggles at start of the research had poorer mental health and alcohol dependency by the end of the study.

“It was a vicious cycle,” Richardson says. He emphasizes that incongruous interventions are necessary to end the cycle of worsening financial stressors and poor mental health because they’re part of the same problem.

“If you give someone some therapy for depression, but they’re still really struggling financially, they’re just going to be depressed again and vice versa,” explains Richardson. “I’ve been training the health service people [at the University of Southampton], but then also the financial advisors, and trying to get them to talk to each other and link up so they’ll maybe fast-track referrals.”

The University of Southampton researchers were surprised to find that a recent increase in tuition fees only had only a minor impact on the mental health of students. They learned that debts seem to have less of an impact on mental health than being able to get by day-to-day.

“But what about ten years’ time if they’re trying to get married or buy a house and they’ve got a 50 grand debt? Because that’s the average now, it’s over £50,000. I don’t know what the differences will be like in 20 years,” says Richardson.

According to Richardson, future research needs to be done to assess how student loans impact the mental health of people later on in life when they have to start paying off their loans because it is at this point that student loans become a day-to-day burden.