title: [Psychological health of students and identification of persons at risk: avoidance of an exam as symptom of depression].
abstract: 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  Our results show that the incidence of depression is almost twice as high among students that have withdrawn from an exam session than among the other students in our sample.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.
authors.affiliation: Institut de Psychologie, Université de Lausanne. Franz.MeyerDeStadelhofen@ip.unil.ch
authors.forename: Franz
authors.initials: F
authors.lastname: Meyer de Stadelhofen
authors.forename: Anne-Charlotte
authors.initials: AC
authors.lastname: Plancherel
authors.forename: Samuel
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Berthoud
authors.forename: Luc
authors.initials: L
authors.lastname: Michel
mesh_terms: 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