Assessment of college students' mental health (MH) and well-being (WB) is important for health promotion and for removing obstacles to academic performance. Many epidemiologic and psychometric studies considered different aspects of MH and WB in college students. However, to date they neglected a broad scientifically grounded simultaneous consideration of diagnostic categories, vulnerability and transdiagniostic factors (e.g. perfectionism, emotional dysregulation, rumination, self-criticism), and of protective factors (e.g. positivity, self-efficacy, values, self-acceptance). This is due to limits of the theories guiding the choice of the psychometric scales and to problems related to questionnaires length. There is a need for brief, stepwise, personalized screening tools, focused both on opportunities for personal improvements and on current problems, that can be self-administered through an electronic infrastructure and adjusted to focus on the main problems indicated.
Based on Conosci te stesso, this project aims to develop a composite psychometrically sound tool to screen WB, MH and distress among college students, starting from the cross-validation of a consistent set of scales to be proposed in an online interactive interview. The goals are to: 1) Select and validate filter questions and psychometric scales for the assessment of personal resources and WB, health behaviors and psychological distress among Sapienza students. 2) Design and implement a digital platform (website) allowing the self-administration of the questionnaires and data collection. 3) Explore the associations between the constructs assessed and academic performance indicators (e.g grades, regularity in the academic credits).
Besides improving knowledge on WB and distress, the results can contribute to an international project and to interventions to encourage students to enhance their personal resources and to use the external resources provided by the universities and by the health systems.
Few studies have considered WB and MH among Italian college students (Marino et al., 2018; Piumatti, 2018; Piumatti et al., 2018). However, to date none has given a broad simultaneous consideration of the diagnostic aspects, of a valid vulnerability and psychopathogenetic factors assessment (e.g. perfectionism, emotional dysregulation, rumination, self-criticism), and of protective factors (e.g. positivity, self-efficacy, values, self-acceptance, interpersonal sensitivity).
Our aim (to develop a composite psychometric tool to screen WB, health and psychological distress among college students) starting from the validation of a consistent set of psychometric scales that can be included in an online interactive battery.
An important strength of the present study is that it will assess WB, several health risk-behaviours and psychological distress on a large sample of college students attending Sapienza University, providing a reliable screening tool that can identify students' low-high risk profiles and the correlates of psychological distress, and WB among Italian college students of Sapienza. Specifically, this project aims to develop a personalized screening tool that can be self-administered through an electronic infrastructure and to create an algorithm that, based on the responses given, prioritizes and adjusts the focus on the main problems identified.
Regarding the recent aforementioned WHO-WMH-CSI initiative, it seems that the prevalence of mental illness among students found is high, which suggests a possible inappropriateness of the use of functional clinical diagnosis tools (SCIDs) in screening surveys since ongoing problems may be confused with remote ones in individuals' life experience. Moreover, the screening instruments used in this worldwide initiative are mainly focused on clinical and psychopathological features as defined on the DSM-V. Hence, the assessment among college students proposed in this study is more comprehensive and wide-ranging compared to previous studies (Cuijpers et al., 2019) since it focuses on WB, protective factors and health-behaviors and not only on mental disorders. Moreover, this multivariate study will also validate and assess the sensitivity of several instruments specifically for the academic context. In developing and carrying out this survey using a web-based screening assessment of psychological distress, WB, personal resources, social interactions and health risk-behaviours, we will also be able to determine the feasibility of successfully implementing it in a large and cross-national scale, among college students attending different institutions.
One of the strengths of this study is that it will also explore if the psychological distress and WB detected through survey assessment will be associated and predict key academic outcomes that are the focus of considerable concern on college students, including academic functioning (e.g., grades, drop-out).
The relevance of the present project is derived from the development and application of a psychological screening tool in the assessment of students' psychological distress in order to promote health-behaviours and WB. Indeed, examining health and psychological distress from the broader perspective of WB instead of illness is recognized as an important progress for health promotion (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 2019).
This project has a unique opportunity to identify factors that may be present before the unfolding of distress symptoms and/or have a protective role on the perceived WB, which again, may give the institutions an opportunity to identify high-risk students who might benefit from preventative interventions. Hence, a secondary goal of this study aims to the need to identify Italian college students with high psychological distress and high health risk-behaviors for psychological interventions and students at risk for preventive interventions. Indeed, the next step of this project will be to develop personalized approaches that identify each student¿s risk profile (vulnerabilities and strengths) and main problems and provide them access to specific interventions (e.g. 'Noi Bene', 'Body Project', 'BuonSonno') that are designed to mitigate the negative effects of vulnerabilities and psychological distress and to promote WB and personal resources.
NB. Reference are included in the previous section