Student Mental Health

For National Suicide Prevention Week, our Review of the Week investigates and offers advice for mental health issues in college students

Posted on September 9, 2019 in Reviews of the Month

Mental health issues and the university student

Iarovici, Doris. Johns Hopkins, 2014
248p, 9781421412719 $59.95, 9781421412382 $34.95

A psychiatrist at Duke’s Counseling and Psychological Services, Iarovici provides a thorough review of mental health issues in college students—including nontraditional students and students with disabilities. The first section provides detailed context for the current higher education setting, highlighting changes in student population over the last 20 years: for example, increase in students with previously treated psychiatric issues and with generational issues; changes in drug and alcohol use; and increasing levels of reported stress. In the second section, the author devotes chapters to particular issues: substance abuse, sleep disorders, anxiety, depression, eating disorders, concentration difficulties, impulse control and other behavioral problems, psychosis. In addition, she looks at loneliness and relationships in the context of the college environment. The particular strength of this book is the careful description of how these issues and problems manifest themselves in a higher education setting and the opportunities and challenges of addressing them in this setting—complicated community effects, FERPA guidelines, working with young adults who are entitled to HIPPA privacy but are financially dependent on parents. Each chapter begins with a concise, relevant clinical vignette. Notes provide substantial references; tables and figures are excellent.

Summing Up: Highly recommended. Upper-division undergraduates through faculty/professionals.
Reviewer: D. L. Loers, Wartburg College
Subject: Social & Behavioral Sciences – Psychology
Choice Issue: Oct 2014

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