[Psychological health of students and identification of persons at risk: avoidance of an exam as symptom of depression].
OBJECTIVE
Our exploratory study concerning student psychological health was aimed at identifying possible subgroups of at-risk students within a college-student population.


METHODS
A total of 445 students answered four questionnaires (three standard psychometric instruments and an ad hoc questionnaire comprising 50 multiple-choice questions). We then searched for risk-groups by studying all answers obtained with the ad hoc questionnaire and looking for those answers that were significantly correlated with ratings of psychopathology. To carry out this search, we used first and second order principal components factor analysis.


RESULTS
Our results show that the incidence of depression is almost twice as high among students that have withdrawn from an exam session than among the other students in our sample. It is further possible to determine that, in our sample, it is not withdrawing from an exam session that causes depression but, rather, it is depression that increases the probability of withdrawing from an exam session.


CONCLUSIONS
It thus definitely seems that, unlike flunking exams, withdrawing from exams is often a symptom of depression.
Meyer de Stadelhofen
Franz
F
Institut de Psychologie, Université de Lausanne. Franz.MeyerDeStadelhofen@ip.unil.ch
Plancherel
Anne-Charlotte
AC
Berthoud
Samuel
S
Michel
Luc
L
D000328:Adult; D001008:Anxiety Disorders / Q000175:diagnosis / Q000453:epidemiology / Q000523:psychology; D003430:Cross-Sectional Studies; D003866:Depressive Disorder / Q000175:diagnosis* / Q000453:epidemiology / Q000523:psychology; D004521:Educational Measurement; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D015994:Incidence; D008297:Male; D010555:Personality Inventory / Q000706:statistics & numerical data*; D025341:Principal Component Analysis; D011336:Probability; D011594:Psychometrics; D018570:Risk Assessment; D012737:Sex Factors; D013001:Somatoform Disorders / Q000175:diagnosis / Q000453:epidemiology / Q000523:psychology; D013334:Students / Q000523:psychology* / Q000706:statistics & numerical data; D013557:Switzerland